Skip to main content

inconsolable regret.bitter grace.

i held a cup of coffee as i strolled down the tree lined avenues along a main street on campus. a chilly breeze rustled my hair, and i drew a deep breath involuntarily. just an hour away from midnight, the work due for tomorrow looms like a formidable mountain.

yet my mind is far from concerned, still reeling from the talk earlier. isaiah 52:13-53:12. the servant song. have you ever experienced the sudden rush of adrenalin when you realised something that never once crossed your mind despite the familiarity of the issue/event/topic? the sudden dread that fills me, knowing that I was one of those, who rejected, despised, disobey him. one of those who drove the nail in, through the constant desire in wanting to be my own God, to lead life the way i want it.

forgetting that when i obey only when i want to, that's not obeying. it's just a parallel of wills. my will, God's will.

and the regret wells up within. a deep sense of failure, ache, knowing that i failed him again. and again and again. something i simply cannot undo. all too often, i fall into this vicious cycle of self pitying that seems like a spiral that leads me towards a bottomless pit. i push the guilt aside, the tears that threaten to overflow and the regret i feel when i realise that all my actions have consequences. why the drama, why the moping?

then i was told this which brought a new perspective i'd never saw-- Grace, is bitter. how true! to accept grace is to acknowledge that you are wrong-- imagine the humiliation! we want no help, or rather, we (knowing that WE screwed up), want to fix it ourselves. even in realising our mistakes, we still want to be behind the steering wheel. we still desire to be our own saviour, our own God, the very essence of what we did wrong in the first place.

but we forget what kind of God we believe in. we forget that he is the one who pays off the essence of sin with himself, the essence of salvation. this is the God we believe in. a God who loves, and desires nothing more than to have his children run to him for protection, comfort and restoration.

i need a pride check now.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

when words read a million times over but still never a bore.(unlike my exam notes that are boring me to tears)

"When you drop a glass or a plate to the ground it makes a loud crashing sound. When a window shatters, a table leg breaks, or when a picture falls off the wall it makes a noise. But as for your heart, when that breaks, it's completely silent. You would think it's so important that it would make the loudest noise in the whole world, or even have some sort of ceremonious sound like the gong of a cymbal or the ringing of a bell. But it's silent and you almost wish there was a noise to distract you from the pain." --Cecelia Ahern

i love physics.

every morning an endless battle ensues within me. the gravitational force that's tugging at me back into bed and the equally strong urgency derived from a pile of never ending work that's making me move towards my breakfast drawer. usually the one that requires me to travel the shortest distance ends up victorious. the bed of cos, which goes without saying. unless the force on the other end is simply too great a draw- a growling stomach maybe, but almost all the time, it's about work that's loading as if each piece were under the influence of gravity and the only way it could go is down onto me. sometimes i wish both forces work in the same direction.
so they say the world's first eco-city, Dongtan is all but bad news, being sustainable not only environmentally, but also socially, economically and culturally. im not sure if i will embrace this idea as warmly as i should. after all, being an advocate for out poor environment for the longest time, i should be overjoyed that at last, some sort of concrete action is taking place. still, there's this nagging feeling in me that this eco-city may be just a veiled attempt to get rid of marshes in the region to create more economically viable areas--it's urbanisation all over again, only that it's marketed with the eco label. think about it. it perturbed me when i read today's papers and a minister was quoted saying that Dongtan will be created over wastelands, thus no harm will be caused to the natural environment.first of all, can agricultural land near a large ecologically significant wetland be considered a wasteland? even if we presume that this agricultural land is ...