keep believing

Martin Luther nailed 95 theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany.

Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott (A Mighty Fortress is our God)..

Let us always remember to return to the Bible (by of course reading it in the first place). During Luther time, people like you and me did not have access to the Bible, until the change brought about by Luther, where he insisted that all people should read the Bible for themselves. Now shame on us, we’re so lazy to read when we have a few Bibles in the languages we understand.

And let us remember to be thankful, always, for the grace of salvation and justification through faith in Christ Jesus.

Soli Deo Gloria!

-

A few months ago..

I was there! With some friends and two most adorable kids..

The greatest problem of our time are not technological, for these we handle fairly well. They are not even political or economic, because the difficulties in these areas, glaring as they may be, are largely derivative. The greatest problems are moral and spiritual, and unless we can make progress in these realms, we may not even survive. This is how advanced cultures have declined in the past..

- D. E. Trueblood

Earlier this week, FYP seemed to be going fine, on one of the days I even thought it was going to be a milestone in my FYP history, and I was almost ready to celebrate. But of course it didn’t happen.

Yesterday, I started to have thoughts like what if I have no results at all at the end of this semester. There’s only two months left. It’s too hard. I’m not doing what I should be doing.

I created those stupid thoughts myself. False hopes and (hopefully, false) worries. Anticipating success at one moment, freaking out the next moment.

When I was so much younger, as a child, like in any Chinese family I had grown ups telling me about all the do’s and don’t’s, all the moral codes I must follow strictly, the good manners I should behave in. Some were trivial, such as one related to eating mango, some more important, like do not go to bed with your boyfriend. Life seemed so neat and proper back then, and I was supposed to live like that, too. Growing up, I saw ugly things unveil, lies, discrepancies between what was told and the reality, incompatibility between what they made me do and their own lives.

Looking back, I can say the education was necessary. They couldn’t have been too informative on the ugly truths with a ten year old. They probably wanted to tell me how it’s all supposed to be instead of how crooked it has gone, and perhaps hoped that I would have a more successful story. I just wish they could have been more honest to me, and slipped in some Christian values.

As an adult myself now I also can understand that it is really difficult to live the way you know you should. I realise I have disappointed many and I’m not proud of it. But it doesn’t mean that we should stop trying, and believing what is right..

-

Some truths we outgrow and leave behind, for they are but rudiments and lessons for beginners, but we cannot thus deal with Divine truth, for though it is sweet food for babes, it is in the highest sense strong meat for men. The truth that we are sinners is painfully with us to humble and make us watchful; the more blessed truth that whosoever believeth on the Lord Jesus shall be saved, abides with us as our hope and joy. Experience, so far from loosening our hold of the doctrines of grace, has knit us to them more and more firmly; our grounds and motives for believing are now more strong, more numerous than ever, and we have reason to expect that it will be so till in death we clasp the Saviour in our arms.

Wherever this abiding love of truth can be discovered, we are bound to exercise our love. No narrow circle can contain our gracious sympathies, wide as the election of grace must be our communion of heart. Much of error may be mingled with truth received, let us war with the error but still love the brother for the measure of truth which we see in him; above all let us love and spread the truth ourselves.

- CH Spurgeon, Morning and Evening

Love interprets things in favor of the one loved.. the principle is clear enough in Paul’s description: “Love is patient.. never selfish, not quick to take offence. Love keeps no score of wrongs.. There is nothing love cannot facel there is no limit to its faith, its hope, and its endurance.”

The trouble, of course, is that we must learn to love people.. Love must be patient when it is tempted (by the delays of other people) to be impatient. Love must not be selfish, even if other people are. Love does not take offence, though people are offensive sometimes. There are wrongs, but love won’t keep score. There are things to be faced, but nothing love can’t face, things to try love’s faith, discourage its hope, and call for its endurance; but it keeps right on trusting, hoping, and enduring. Love never ends.

- E Elliot, Passion and Purity

Being in love is a good thing, but it is not the best thing. There are many things below it, but there also things above it. You cannot make it the basis of a whole life. It is a noble feeling, but it is still a feeling. Now no feeling can be relied on to last in its full intensity, or even to last at all.. In fact, the state of being in love usually does not last..

But of course, ceasing to be ‘in love’ need not mean ceasing to love. Love.. is a deep unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit; reinforced by the grace which both partners ask and receive from God.. They can retain this love even when each would easily, if they allow themselves, be ‘in love’ with someone else. ‘Being in love’ first moved them to promise fidelity: this quieter love enables them to keep their promise. It is on this love that the engine of marriage is run: being in love was the explosion that started it.

- CS Lewis, Mere Christianity

FYP was driving me mad. I was still at the very first step and was progressing very very extremely slowly. Was stuck as I couldn’t find the mistake in my model, I wished I could just get someone check it for me and point out the mistake. Instant solution, easy way out. But no, I was the only one who knows my model well enough, has access to it, I needed to spend more time to solve the problem, just that (felt like) I didn’t have time. It’s like an analogy to problems in life. Always want easy solutions or step by step how to procedures, don’t wish to spend too much time and brain cells to struggle.

To finally find the mistake in the model felt really good, it’s like finding a treasure, an accomplishment. I would prefer not to have treasure to find in the first place, but I guess what matters is the process one has to go through to get to the treasure right. I won’t say I was loving the process.

My parents are here this week.

Sunshine, lollipops and rainbows,
Everything that’s wonderful..