busy being tabooed

The best gift and offering that one can give to God or anyone isn't money, its time. Money does make itself look dirt cheap when compared to time. As i reflect about my life based on collected unconscious feedbacks, i realised that serving God or doing favours for people are not considered time well spent as they adds to the business. What everyone is looking for is quailty time.

It will be good when i'm stripped of everything that i can do or what people percieve that i can do. A part of me is so looking forward to that day. But when that happen will i still be able to give and recieve love? I guess not. But hey, business also comes at the expense of intimacy. I do feel distant from everyone and somehow no matter how hard i try, i still find that the distance and coverup still exsists. I figured that the gap must be bridged from both ends.

I'm always busy, when will i ever be free? I do make a big effort to set aside time, to be free for people i treasure, but when the time comes when i can, its always too late and it will always be too late. Is my effort not good enough? I really feel that i'm missing out alot and i understand that everyone is expostulating (some castigate) me because of it. Its not even safe in the safest place.

"Busy Matthew" - i want it to be my last name no more. I'm so very tired of being busy and trying so hard not to be too busy for everyone. Its not easy being busy and the same applies for being too free. And guess what! Its also so hard to be in the middle of both.

"In everything there must be balance" - rubbish! Where in the balance could i be where at every point i should be it rejecting it like plague. Ok i find this to be a negative spiral, shall stop here.

Absolute logic

The earliest example shows that Adam and Eve ate the fruit before they were allowed to and therefore suffered. Intellect kills when you are not ready for it. Is that why there is so many athestist who claim to be intellectuals because they claim that they think. (I think therefore I am?)

We know that it isn't true of their claim that theist don't think. The funny thing is that when athestist (not a absolute term) pitch those accusations, they have in fact just proven that they don't think as well. So once again the field is leveled, we are the same, just on different sides. Just like Man U fans versus Liverpool fans.

Talking about sides, I shall now take the chance to address the sceptics.

Theres always two sides to a coin, like in order for love to exsist, pain must also exists to define love. Same with good and evil like what Paul said in Romans chapter7:7-12. We cannot say that because pain and suffering (therefore evil) exists, therefore God doesn't exists. Thats a logic flaw by itself.

The existance of God cannot be disproved by introducing the reality of wickedness and suffering. Anyways there can only be two sides when a coin exsist (sorry for the pun). In order for good AND evil to exsist there must be an absolute moral law to define them. And an absolute moral law can only exsist if God exsist.

Because of our finite character, Man cannot be the measure of all things or we will be forced to ask which man is the source of measure. Because of our finitude we cannot assume that we have the capacity to decide whether the moral law exists. Truth is , like how Ravi Zacharias puts it, "No matter how hard we try, we cannot deny a moral frame of reference without invoking a moral absolute."

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After all the bombardment of truth or perceived truth, one still must make the decision, yes or no. That is when you are stripped of all your armor and forced to confront the decision in its purest sense. No matter how convincing either side is, at the point of decision making you can bring along nothing. This is what i call "beyond proof". I came to realise that the key factor is just to believe, nothing more.

I know, this doesn't make logical sense... but think about it, logic is only what we understood (or think we understand) and logic itself is not infallible. Inspiration cannot be defined by logic, neither could love. Lets look at it this way, centuries ago, people thought that it is illogical to think that the world is round or humans could fly.

The bottomline is this "Logic doesn't save, Christ does."

Buried treasure

My neighbour recently told me that he wanted to live my life, saying that it seems alot more interesting reason being that he finds his life is boring not because of the lack of challange but he pointed out that its because he's not learning anything. I thought that he brought up a very interesting point. Very timely message too.

We grow the most when they are going through difficulties and what we percieve as hardships. The strongest people (mentally) are the ones who are always always challenging themselves or being challanged by their environment against their will.

Like when there is a lack of gravity we wouldn't be as strong physically as we are now. I figured that the same rule applies to the mental and spiritual. That when theres a lack of external stress it brings no aim to live.

If you are not stuggling, you are not learning and if you are not struggling, you are wasting time. The whole point is not to pass or flare at anything, but to learn something out of it. If you learn alot but fail, its still worth it. You get out of a situation victorious when you have learnt something out if it.

I figured that i too am becoming stangant and lukewarm. This is must be the result of resting too much and for too long doing nothing seemingly constructive. I strongly believe that the physical affects the spirtual. Like when how you decide to slack off to rest physically and when the rest becomes prolonged, you stop praying like you used to because you stopped seeing the need for it. If you are not stuggling you are not growing.

Now i really crave for my previous clients to contact me and get me to meeting their deadlines again. I guess the popular ideal isn't that ideal afterall. Lukewarmness stinks and stings. I fight to live. I guess the fight makes life more interesting. Its tough yes, but without it i rather not live at all.

When we keep coming to a renewed knowledge of how weak we actually are then we can see better how omnipotent is the God we worship. His strength is most amplified in our weakness.

"Life is only as good as the memories we make, and i'm taking back what belongs to me." - The Ataris

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This post is strongly inspired by Moon. Thanks and Happy Birthday. Your situation put me on my toes too. I thank God that you are still alive.

My bag of cheap tricks

New shirt - view bigger size here.

Alot of people have been asking me to teach them to be better at photoshop and because of this I'm so excited on the idea of doing a photoshop intermediate class for R-AGE and the open public this coming holiday like november. Training is the main aim, and of course there are sub objectives like evanglism and gathering people who are interested to serve in the design side of the ministry.

Lets hope the leadership approves.

we big babies

I just finished the logos of the five pillars of GraceAOG. They are so difficult to do because they are qualitative not a quantitative. How i wished they were quantitative, at least i need not think, just do and do and do. But i guess i live for qualitative projects, at least they are not mundane. If this is approved i'll be celebrating big time man. I'm always on a gamble if i want to change the art direction for the better of something.

I've just finished watching "The Pianist". Its painful to watch. Up till now i haven't really understood what is pain and what is suffering and how does it feels like to loose all hope. I figured that its perfectly reasonable for people in those times to stop believing in God. I figured that its only when we understood what is pain and what is suffering then we would really understand the character of God.

"You are an artist, you keep peoples spirits up." - The Pianist