Who I am

Can we be significant? Lost in the vastness of astronomical space and geological time, can we as individuals have significance? What is man? What is woman? How many answers have been given to this question? I'm a supreme product of the evolutionary process, the master of my fate, the captain of my soul. I'm the great technologist, the manipulator of the world. I'm a product of time, plus matter, plus chance; if you boil me down I'm just a few dollars worth of chemicals. I'm the greatest murderer the world has ever seen. I'm acting out my DNA, but who wrote the code? I'm the result of dividing a crowd of a million by a million. I'm a creature trapped and tormented by desire, caught in an endless cycle of reincarnations. I'm a passing shadow. Like a drowning person I put my head above the ocean waves of time for a few moments, and then disappear forever. What is a man? What is a woman? What is a human being? What is our significance as human beings?

Rev. Howard Peskett on Psalm 8

I heard these rather provocative questions raised ever so eloquently at at a talk I attended some time ago, and it made me think about the ways in which people answer this most fundamental of questions. Who are you? Who am I? What am I? I think it's fair to say that how we answer this question greatly affects the way in which we live our lives.

Roughly a month after I had heard this talk, I came across this sign outside Orchard Road Presbyterian Church and it made me smile.

GOD IS THE REAL POTTER,
NOT HARRY.

We are the clay, you are the potter;
we are all the work of your hand.
Isaiah 64:8

And I was reminded of this song, one that speaks to the deepest reaches of my heart.

Who am I, that the Lord of all the earth
would care to know my name
would care to feel my hurt?
Who am I, that the Bright and Morning Star
would choose to light the way
for my ever wandering heart?

Who am I, that the eyes that see my sin
would look on me with love and watch me rise again?
Who am I, that the voice that calmed the sea
would call out through the rain
and calm the storm in me?

Not because of who I am
but because of what You've done
Not because of what I've done
but because of who You are

I am a flower quickly fading
Here today and gone tomorrow
A wave tossed in the ocean
A vapour in the wind
Still You hear me when I'm calling
Lord, You catch me when I'm falling
And You've told me who I am
I am Yours

A New Song

I discovered a new song tonight at the Festival of Praise. I haven't been in a few years and so I was quite determined to go this time. Your grace has found me just as I am... Empty handed, but alive in your hands... Eyes closed, I could hear thousands sing the words back to me in one voice. What else could have brought so many strangers here together on a Sunday night? Maybe any free rock concert might have had a somewhat similar effect, but we were all here not just to see the band. The band wasn't even here just to play to us. Everyone in the stadium was here for Someone who was not "here" in the literal sense of the word. And yet He is everywhere, all the time, and He was here with us tonight.

Majesty by Delirious

Here I am, humbled by your Majesty
Covered by your grace so free
Here I am, knowing I'm a sinful man
Covered by the blood of the Lamb

Now I've found the greatest love of all is mine
Since you laid down your life
The greatest sacrifice

Majesty, Majesty
Your grace has found me just as I am
Empty handed, but alive in your hands

So here I stand, humbled by the love that you give
Forgiven so that I can forgive
So here I stand, knowing that I'm your desire
Sanctified by glory and fire

Now I've found the greatest love of all is mine
Since you laid down your life
The greatest sacrifice

Majesty, Majesty
Your grace has found me just as I am
Empty handed, but alive in your hands
Majesty, Majesty
Forever I am changed by your love
In the presence of your Majesty

Gabriel and the Vagabond

First heard it on Grey's Anatomy. Couldn't get it out of my head. Absolutely love it.

by Foy Vance

There's a man in the corner and his clothes are worn
And he's holding out his hand
You can see in his eyes as the people walk by
He knows they don't understand

You see they just think he's gonna take their money
And go and spend it all on dope
Then a man stopped by and I saw a smile inside him
As he gently whispered hope

Well the tramp started to cry, just kept saying,
"Why? Why? Why?
Can't you see I'm a dyin' tonight
Well I'm 32 and I've got this one pair of shoes
And a bad taste in my mouth
I think it's clear to see that even God don't love me
Or else why would He leave me this way?"

Then Gabriel just smiled and said be peaced my child
Salvation is here today

He got up to his feet and he sang Hallelujah
People were turning around in the street
He looked them in the eyes and he sang,
"Hallelujah
There's someone here you gotta meet
Someone you just gotta meet"

When the vagabond turned round without a sound
Gabriel just smiled and disappeared
When he looked to the crowd they were laughing out loud
But he could not see them for tears
When his vision came round
There was a young girl on the ground
And he knew she was finding it hard to cope
You know she never was a fighter until he lay beside her
And gently whispered hope

They got up to their feet and they sang Hallelujah
People in the street they were turning around
They looked them in the eyes and they sang,
"Hallelujah
There's someone here we have found"
They sang,
"Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Every knee will bow and every tongue confess
and the voice of one crying in the wilderness
crying
Hallelujah, Hallelujah"

A Deeper Magic

WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS

I sped through Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows over the weekend, thoroughly enjoying the ride (I'll have to read it again). The book did not disappoint; though some may have wished for a darker ending, I found the resolution satisfying. This is, after all, a children's book. I don't think Rowling can be faulted for happily-ever-after. I was, however, very much taken by surprise by the general tone of the book; the Christian symbolism which the earlier six books had hinted at came right to the fore in this one.

At one point in the story, Harry is led to the Sword of Griffyndor, a sword that will enable him to destroy the Horcruxes (objects housing parts of Voldemort's soul). Rowling writes, "The ice reflected his distorted shadow and the beam of wandlight, but deep below the thick, misty gray carapace, something else glinted. A great silver cross..."

Christmas Eve finds Harry and his friends in the church graveyard in Godric's Hollow, where Dumbledore and Harry's family are buried. On the Dumbledore family tomb, the inscription reads, "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also" (from Matthew 6:21) and on Harry's parents' tomb are the words, "The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death" (from 1 Corinthians 15:26, part of a passage about resurrection).

When Harry meets Dumbledore in the existential in-between, Harry asks Dumbledore why Voldemort could not kill him. Dumbledore tells him that "That which Voldemort does not value, he takes no trouble to comprehend. Of house-elves and children's tales, of love, loyalty and innocence, Voldemort knows and understands nothing. Nothing. That they all have a power beyond his own, a power beyond the reach of any magic, is a truth he has never grasped."

Right from the beginning of the series, we are told that it was Harry's mother's substitutionary sacrifice that saved him from certain death, for such love had power that not even the darkest magic could defeat. In the Deathly Hallows, Harry himself willingly lays down his life for his friends, surrendering himself to Voldemort. (Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. - John 15:13) In a sense, Harry dies and is resurrected. In Rowling's world, the deepest magic is clearly love.

In an interview with the Vancouver Sun in 2000, when Rowling was asked whether or not she was Christian, she replied "Yes, I am," continuing, "Which seems to offend the religious right far worse than if I said I thought there was no God. Every time I've been asked if I believe in God, I've said yes, because I do, but no one ever really has gone any more deeply into it than that, and I have to say that does suit me, because if I talk too freely about that I think the intelligent reader, whether 10 or 60, will be able to guess what's coming in the books."

Somewhere over the rainbow

6 year old Connie Talbot sings on Britain's Got Talent

This video was brought to my attention today by a dear friend who titled the email "if angels sound infinitely more beautiful than this, how indescribably lovely heaven must be". I hit play and I must confess, this little girl's singing brought tears to my eyes. It was the song she was singing and the way that she sung, with the freshness and purity that only truth itself possesses.

The day before, the very same friend had written to say that one of her closest friends from university had been suddenly diagnosed with acute leukemia and was undergoing emergency treatment. She asked me to pray.

Sometimes it is so easy just to coast through life, untouched by any major heartbreak. Sometimes, we can even become desensitised to the mass violence and suffering that is reported in the news on a daily basis. But when tragedy strikes close to home, where is hope to be found?

Somewhere over the rainbow
Way up high
There's a land that I've heard of
Once in a lullaby

We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words — to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it. That is why we have peopled air and earth and water with gods and goddesses and nymphs and elves — that, though we cannot, yet these projections can, enjoy in themselves that beauty, grace, and power of which Nature is the image.

... For if we take the imagery of Scripture seriously, if we believe that God will one day give us the Morning Star and cause us to put on the splendour of the sun, then we may surmise that both the ancient myths and the modern poetry, so false as history, may be very near the truth as prophecy. At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendours we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumour that it will not always be so. Some day, God willing, we shall get in.

C. S. Lewis in The Weight of Glory

Somewhere over the rainbow
Skies are blue
And the dreams that you dare to dream
Really do come true

In the last book of the new Testament, the apostle John writes about a vision of the future that he has from God.

The New Jerusalem

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away."

He who was seated on the throne said, "I am making everything new!"

Revelation 21:1-5

One day, everything sad will come untrue.

Of freedom and food

With the recent Singapore Day in New York (talkingcock.com's Top Excuses for NOT Protesting at 'Singapore Day' in New York is pretty funny) , seriouseats.com noted that "According to the late, great [New York Times food critic] Johnny Apple, Singapore has the best street food in the world."

In a September 2003 review, Apple writes:

"FOOD is the purest democracy we have," K. F. Seetoh [of Makansutra fame] said as we dug into breakfast bowls of bak kut teh, a peppery, restorative Teochew soup of pork ribs, mushrooms and kidneys. ''Singaporeans recognize no difference between bone china and melamine.''

Slurp, slurp. Yum, yum. The clear, aromatic broth, full of tender, close-grained pork, perked up by herbs and whole garlic cloves, was cooked in a hole in the wall next to a busy expressway and eaten at a sidewalk table. Cab drivers, teachers and a few junior executives slurped around us. Bak kut teh is the city's preferred hangover remedy, and Ng Ah Sio makes the best, which is why Mr. Seetoh took me there.

He continues:

I THINK the knock on Singapore is way overdone. Sure, it's squeaky clean and modern, but come on: does anyone actually prefer the beggars, rubbish and shantytowns that deface many large Asian cities? Not the poor souls who live in them. It's plenty tough on miscreants, but hardly deserving of William Gibson's woundingly dismissive tag line, "Disneyland With the Death Penalty."

Under Goh Chok Tong, Lee Kwan Yew's successor, individualism has gained a little more breathing room. The longstanding and much-ridiculed ban on chewing gum has just been relaxed. Censorship guidelines are currently under high-level review. Nightclubs, once invisible, now throb into the wee hours. And the louchest of Maugham's or Conrad's characters would feel right at home in the seedy bars and brothels off Geylang Road, east of the city center.

Singapore: A Repressed City-State? Not in Its Kitchens was the last article that was published in the New York Times while Apple was still alive. In it he writes:

With the country’s basic manufacturing jobs shifting to China, the younger Mr. Lee wants to turn the painfully strait-laced Singapore into a relaxed, appealing target for tourists. The primary lure will be a $3 billion resort and casino ...It will offer not only extensive facilities for gambling, an activity dear to Chinese hearts, but also, like Las Vegas, a wide array of top-end dining spots, in a nation where good eating is a national pastime.

But Singapore already has gastronomic attractions aplenty. Start with its unmatched street food — chili crabs and chicken rice, laksa and satay and fish head curry — served in hundreds of hawkers’ stalls. Fast, cheap and delicious, its hygiene is certified by the ever-vigilant Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources.

As a friend pointed out rather humorously - who needs freedom when you have food?

Good Friday: Sunday's Comin'

Once again, my weak and wandering heart is reminded of just how much it cost. Just how much we are loved. And just how much we have to look forward to.


Come and see, come and see
Come and see the King of love
See the purple robe and crown of thorns he wears
Soldiers mock, rulers sneer
As he lifts the cruel cross
Lone and friendless now he climbs towards the hill

We worship at your feet
Where wrath and mercy meet
And a guilty world is washed
By love's pure stream
For us he was made sin
Oh, help me take it in
Deep wounds of love cry out 'Father, forgive'
I worship, I worship
The Lamb who was slain.

Come and weep, come and mourn
For your sin that pierced him there
So much deeper than the wounds of thorn and nail
All our pride, all our greed
All our fallenness and shame
And the Lord has laid the punishment on him

Man of heaven, born to earth
To restore us to your heaven
Here we bow in awe beneath
Your searching eyes
From your tears comes our joy
From your death our life shall spring
By your resurrection power we shall rise

by Graham Kendrick

Love is...

We were made for God. Only by being in some respect like Him, only by being a manifestation of His beauty, loving-kindness, wisdom or goodness, has any earthly Beloved excited our love. It is not that we have loved them too much, but that we did not quite understand what we were loving. It is not that we shall be asked to turn from them, so dearly familiar, to a Stranger. When we see that face of God we shall know that we have always known it. He has been a party to, has made, sustained and moved moment by moment within, all our earthly experiences of innocent love. All that was true love in them was, even on earth, far more His than ours, and ours only because His. In Heaven there will be no anguish and no turning away from our earthly Beloved. First, because we shall have turned already; from the portraits to the Original, from the rivulets to the Fountain, from the creatures He made lovable to Love Himself. But secondly, because we shall find them all in Him. By loving Him more than them we shall love them more than we now do.

C. S. Lewis in The Four Loves

Place me like a seal over your heart,
like a seal on your arm;
for love is as strong as death,
its jealousy unyielding as the grave.
It burns like blazing fire,
like a mighty flame.
Many waters cannot quench love;
rivers cannot wash it away.

Song of Songs 8:6-7

Barack Obama: The Audacity of Hope

I was quite pleased to hear that Barack Obama had formally declared his intentions to wade into the 2008 Presidential race. These are early days yet, and of course the race is still wide open, but I've been an admirer of Mr Obama since his electrifying speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention (transcript), in which he rousingly proclaimed "Hope in the face of difficulty, hope in the face of uncertainty, the audacity of hope: In the end, that is God's greatest gift to us, the bedrock of this nation, a belief in things not seen, a belief that there are better days ahead."

It would be great if he eventually did win the presidency, but more importantly, regardless of outcome, I do hope that he conducts himself with humility and grace, especially given his open profession of his faith. In a wonderful speech about the role of religion and politics in society, he speaks of how he came to this faith. (Slate magazine notes that Obama "doesn't recount the story of his conversion in order to establish his religious bona fides; he does it in the service of a broader argument ... for a 'deeper, fuller conversation about religion in this country'".)

I was not raised in a particularly religious household, as undoubtedly many in the audience were. My father, who returned to Kenya when I was just two, was born Muslim but as an adult became an atheist. My mother, whose parents were non-practicing Baptists and Methodists, was probably one of the most spiritual and kindest people I've ever known, but grew up with a healthy skepticism of organized religion herself. As a consequence, so did I.

It wasn't until after college, when I went to Chicago to work as a community organizer for a group of Christian churches, that I confronted my own spiritual dilemma.

I was working with churches, and the Christians who I worked with recognized themselves in me. They saw that I knew their Book and that I shared their values and sang their songs. But they sensed that a part of me that remained removed, detached, that I was an observer in their midst.

And in time, I came to realize that something was missing as well -- that without a vessel for my beliefs, without a commitment to a particular community of faith, at some level I would always remain apart, and alone.

And if it weren't for the particular attributes of the historically black church, I may have accepted this fate. But as the months passed in Chicago, I found myself drawn - not just to work with the church, but to be in the church.

For one thing, I believed and still believe in the power of the African-American religious tradition to spur social change, a power made real by some of the leaders here today. Because of its past, the black church understands in an intimate way the Biblical call to feed the hungry and cloth the naked and challenge powers and principalities. And in its historical struggles for freedom and the rights of man, I was able to see faith as more than just a comfort to the weary or a hedge against death, but rather as an active, palpable agent in the world. As a source of hope.

And perhaps it was out of this intimate knowledge of hardship -- the grounding of faith in struggle -- that the church offered me a second insight, one that I think is important to emphasize today.

Faith doesn't mean that you don't have doubts.

You need to come to church in the first place precisely because you are first of this world, not apart from it. You need to embrace Christ precisely because you have sins to wash away - because you are human and need an ally in this difficult journey.

It was because of these newfound understandings that I was finally able to walk down the aisle of Trinity United Church of Christ on 95th Street in the Southside of Chicago one day and affirm my Christian faith. It came about as a choice, and not an epiphany. I didn't fall out in church. The questions I had didn't magically disappear. But kneeling beneath that cross on the South Side, I felt that I heard God's spirit beckoning me. I submitted myself to His will, and dedicated myself to discovering His truth.

The Crowd or the Cross

This is a fantastic little video. I first saw it at a friend's church's Easter service in New York and it's stuck in my mind ever since. The graphics are great and it lays out very succintly the choice that we all must make - so who will we follow?

The lyrics to the song in the video can be found here.