Drenched

rain
Originally uploaded by mincaye.

It's been another long week, and it's not over yet! Quite a lot to write, but not enough time, so here goes...


Sacred Gateway's scripture passage today reminds me of what we discussed at CU yesterday: discipleship.

The excerpt was taken from Matthew 16:24-28, the passage from which this famous verse is taken: "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me." Sacred Gateway then asks, "What am I afraid of losing?"

As I think about denying myself contact with a close friend, I realise I've been seeing attributes in others that I'd never noticed before. I'm building and strengthening friendships with those I've for the most part neglected.

Chien Yih connected discipleship with servanthood. I admit the account in which Jesus washes the feet of the disciples, is one that still baffles me. Not because I'm shocked that God should wash the feet of man, but because it's just so... unusual, extraordinary.

(Maybe it's these little things that testify to the fact that indeed, Jesus is Christ, God with us. No other would do something so insane, something so beyond belief).

And I am reminded of the present my aunt gave me for my birthday; a rather thick and furry green towel. When I first held it in my hand, it struck me as a very powerful symbol of servanthood. (That doesn't necessarily mean I'll be washing feet with it, heheh)


On another note, I've been thinking about education lately. It strikes me that our education system is one that stifles imagination; I don't know enough about other systems to comment on them.

Here, everything must somehow be substantiated by fact, must follow certain rules, must be based on some unchanging factor. Everything is done 'by the book.'

Yet I also realise, taking the broader context/definition, that you can't prove a groundbreaking idea using present conceptions; you cannot understand something out of the box using in-the-box mentality.

No student thinks of suggesting some radical idea in class, or questioning what's written in the textbooks; even if they did, they would merely become some sort of laughingstock.

But so were the great ones. Discoverers like Columbus, revolutionists like Gandhi, geniuses like Einstein and Beethoven, and a certain Nazarene carpenter some 2000 years ago -- these, and more, saw what no one else could and changed our lives forever.

C.S. Lewis hit the nail on the head, when he wrote in The Weight of Glory:

That is why the poets tell us such lovely falsehoods. They talk as if the west wind could really sweep into a human soul; but it can't... 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.

He was referring to heaven and glory, and how the incredible may paint a picture more resemblant to what will come, rather than what is.

(OK, I have to go now. Need to pick Wilson up for the Bible quiz).