Sometimes you never know what'll come out on that piece of paper until you pick up your pen and start writing.

Mourning

In deep mourning for the lose of a father, a friend, an inspiration, a mentor, a role model, a forerunner, the prototype for heaven on earth. The person who challenged and inspired me to run with the house of prayer vision for life.

"I remember you."

Why would you ever complain, O Jacob,

or, whine, Israel, saying,

"God has lost track of me.

He doesn't care what happens to me"?

Don't you know anything? Haven't you been listening?

God doesn't come and go. God lasts.

He's Creator of all you can see or imagine.

He doesn't get tired out, doesn't pause to catch His breath.

And He knows everything, inside and out.

He energizes those who get tired,

gives fresh strength to dropouts.

For even young people tire and drop out,

young folk in their prime stumble and fall.

But those who wait upon God get fresh strength.

They spread their wings and soar like eagles,

They run and don't get tired,

they walk and don't lag behind.

- Isaiah 40:27-31

something shiny caught my eye

on my very last dive

when i was scavenging

i found an open clam shell

with the insides pearly and white

reflecting the sunlight above the sea

the clam itself had probably been eaten by a lobster or a crab

and what had been left was a large dab of the angel-white substance

resembling a heart-shaped giant and flat pearl

i dived down and reached it

delighted

the insides of the clam shell were so beautiful

like something pure and alive in the blue-green corals

shining

a star in the deep

i held onto it firmly with my right hand

deciding to to bring it home as a souvenir for mom

or for us to remember underwater langkawi

when it was time to go up

i was near the surface

ascending

looking down, with the clam shell in my hand

satisfied

couldn't wait to show-and-tell the people in the boat

1 meter away from the top

suddenly an urge inside forced me to drop it

as if it is what i should and must do

as if i couldn't help but let go

even though i wanted it so much

so much

my right palm slowly unfolded

a will of its own

i watched the treasure drop

and drop

... and drop

until it reached the bottom

about 15 meters down

mesmerized

why?

this time a voice inside me spoke

that quiet, mysterious voice

always uttering paradoxes

then i knew

that just as the treasures of the ocean are not ours to remove

or control

or take at will

my life is also not mine to control

earthly treasures

possessions

life itself

no matter how much you value it

how important it means to you

for things such as these

the big lesson is and has always been

to let go

"Growth means change and change involves risk, stepping from the known to the unknown."

-author unknown

i've added something to my vacuum of memory tonight

tonight during sharing in worship practice it was one of those moments when you look around at the faces surrounding you and realize how much you love them all and its that love which causes time to freeze just enough for you to secretly take a mental photograph which is immediately sent to your vacuum of memory at the very back of your mind where you store all the wonderful and delightful moments you experience on earth which makes earth seem like heaven or a small moment like an eternity long just because of that electric sense of being alive and breathing and right in the middle of His divine story that He wrote before the world even began which gives you the exact purpose of living, really.

God is in my joy and also in my pain. Hallelujah

on photography, schoolwork, and God's emotions

Writing an essay on Susan Sontag's book On Photography really caused me to re-dig my passion to be a photojournalist. A picture taken in a foreign country can speak of the land's culture, the people and their living. Emotions captured in photographs last forever. Moments are brought still and allowed to be re-lived time and time again. 

Before my summer travels, i must prepare my film camera well. I want to capture what i experience in Mongolia and Canada and bring it back with me to Hong Kong.

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On the other hand, it's really hard to try concentrating on schoolwork and also deal with the small details of preparation and follow-up for Worship Central, GDOP, and Call 2 All. By next monday, i will be free from the academics forever and will have the privilege of finally able to focus on the technical and spiritual preparation for major events that're coming up in a couple weeks. Till then, it's still papers and one last exam for me. 

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I was reading Isaiah, Jeremiah and Lamentations last night before going to bed, and read those three books of the prophets like i never read before. they appeared before me as sharp and living, violent and lovesick words of lament and questioning from a God whose love has relentlessly  abandoned Him and went to seek after wooden idols, trashing the Glory that is eternal and true. It was so remarkably sad feeling His emotions and His heartbeat, beating for a people who no longer loves Him and follows His ways. I long to love you with all of my heart, my mind, my strength and my soul. I long to follow your ways. I hope that you can find a faithful friend on this earth in me, Oh God.

I Will Remember You

Recently there has been a song that reminds me a lot of my lazy country childhood ...climbing trees, picking blueberries for muffin-baking, and long sunday afternoon church picnics by a shallow stream. Oh how i love these songs which bring me back to that country laziness - something that i cannot seem to experience in Hong Kong. 

I Will Remember You by Sarah McLachlan

I will remember you

Will you remember me?

Don't let your life pass you by

Weep not for the memories

Remember the good times that we had?

I let them slip away from us when things got bad

How clearly I first saw you smilin' in the sun

Wanna feel your warmth upon me, I wanna be the one

I'm so tired but I can't sleep

Standin' on the edge of something much too deep

It's funny how we feel so much but we cannot say a word

We are screaming inside, but we can't be heard

I'm so afraid to love you, but more afraid to lose

Clinging to a past that doesn't let me choose

Once there was a darkness, a deep and endless night

You gave me everything you had - oh you gave me light

So I will remember you

Will you remember me?

Don't let your life pass you by

Weep not for the memories

wholehearted company :)

one of the ways to be constantly filled with joy is to find some people that you can totally be yourself in front of , and then let go and be completely yourself and free when you're with them. this has been one of the greatest joys that i've been experiencing since last september i think, and the joy has only been escalating :S ... what i find most precious is that joy truly only comes from loving God together and being Christ-centered :) we all receive from Him, go crazy, and then it bounces off each other and that's when stuff starts getting really weird. "IONO..." 

tonight, i was able to walk into a room, put my bag down, immediately feel His delight and enter into deep intensely lovesick worship without saying a word to anyone. oh the power of having comrades to walk with who are wholehearted and all sold out for Christ. i love.

things left over from the country road :)

i used to sit hours and hours at the back of our bluish green toyota corolla, looking out the window at the country landscape gliding by in a fury. those were the times when we had to drive for at least 45 minutes before reaching any city, mall, or funky dimly-lit chinese restaurant where there was rice, which my mom adored. 

the blue-grass state was nothing but fields and fields of pasture for the famous kentucky-bred horses. patches of green in the summer. clumps of dried yellow hay rolled up into big clusters littered everywhere in fall. in the winter it was nothing but white. skunks were awful and the smell would linger for up to a good thirty minutes in the car. very occasionally, little foxes or other peculiar animals killed by traffic would cause a commotion by the roadside. 

on Sunday nights after church fellowship, dad would have to drive home along the oneway country paths in pitch-black complete darkness - not even one single road lamp miles away. at the backseat, i wouldn't be able to see my own five fingers if i raised them up an inch before my eyes. 

right before the entrance of our little town, there was a medium sized hill along the road. everytime we went home through that way i would beg for dad to speed over the hill like we were in a roller coaster, and the three of us would yell at the top of our lungs.

it is funny how i remembered everything back then so clearly i could write on and on about every little random memory etched deeply at the back of my mind. then the years shortly after we came back to hong kong were comparatively like a vacuum of grey for me. anything that i could remember were either sad, lonely, or frustrating times. humph, it really must've been a very bad time for a child. 

oh but i still remember :) ...i still remember stepping through the screen door and out of the warmth of the cottage fireplace late one night, encountering and sucking in the cold mountain air. it was way past midnight and we were camping in yellowstone. looked up at the sky and the literally millions of stars took our breaths away. everyone was surprised and silent - it was as if the heavens had decided to unveil itself and show us all the stars the Creator has ever created in the history of the existence of the world. there was not one inch of the jet black sky above not dotted with diamonds and we saw shooting stars fly past almost every 5 seconds. nothing but a sacred moment.

and there were those lakes too, late at night :) 

these days, i often suddenly surprise myself by remembering that i am deciding to stay in hong kong after graduation. it's hilarious and an absolute work of God.... :)

"be very well hidden"

this was what God clearly said to me concerning these two weeks before the Book of Joel easter conference. i'm clearly in need of a big fix and a lot of discipline in order to be spiritually, emotionally and physically ready for what He wants to do on 10th and 11th April of this year. some prayer and fasting, reading the Word, keeping the fire going strong at home. it always comes down to these but i'm having a two week intensified training period. grace, grace, grace.

it's gonna be heavy, heavy, heavy. It's all coming down. the urgency is raining down, the trumpets are ablast. He is releasing the forerunner ministry in Asia.

"be ready". it is time for a sacred fast and a solemn assembly. before that, crucify me Lord. really. cus i don't want to die on stage ......... in all seriousness. 

die, flesh, die! 

in the meantime, Lord fill us with the spirit of wisdom and revelation, that we may truly know you. fill us with the Fear of the Lord. Amen. 

learning to be jacob learning to be free

Jacob really longed to be a hero

while all I really wanted was a friend.

I'm the way, the life, the truth,

tell Me Jacob - when will the lying end?

Does the striving make you strong?

Cause when I came to love on you...

you fought Me till the dawn.

Jacob had a dream for all the ages,

Jacob had the drive to build a nation.

But your striving is in vain if your only aim 

is to build your own great name.

Because My dream's not what you do...

Jacob will you dream for Me,

the way that I have dreamed for you?

Finally Jacob's lying down,

and while he sleeps - I will dream:

of a generation not known for their crowns

or success - but a King

who is not so much as interested in crowds

or pleasing men - but knowing Me.

I have given Jacob's generation the key of David  -  Intimacy.

To open up the doorway to the nations

and release revelations of Intimacy with Me.  

dawn

in the midst of being a work zombie and after sitting in front of the computer for the longest time, i saw the sun rise yesterday morning at approximately 5:46am, right when i was climbing in bed. dawns are my favorite time of the day if i am actually up and awake to appreciate it. i love watching the sky slowly change its color from dark, dark azure blue ... slowly and magnificently to bright lemon yellow. it is like seeing a miracle unfolding right before you, all around, above and beyond you, enclosing you. so beautiful. just a tiny bit reflection of the glory of God.

dawns always mean something significant when God allows me to see them. tomorrow i am planning on waking up at 6am so i have 9 whole hours to work on my presentation in the afternoon (always so ideal). so i'll probably look out my window which faces the sea to the east of hong kong after hearing my alarm ring tomorrow morning and the first thing i see will be a beautiful new day unrolling itself over the horizon of lei yu mun. i love my bedroom view. 

i remember in late august, when two very important people in my life left for college, i couldn't sleep well and was an insomniac for 3 nights and saw 3 dawns in a roll, and at the third dawn i heard God whisper, "it is finished". then about a month later i had dinner with Christine, morphed and went crazy. a couple weeks after i transformed, i couldn't sleep and was troubled. i remember God spoke to me that night in a bizarre way (couldn't remember what He said) but what i remembered was that when the dawn came which lit up the sky and turned it from black to fiery orange , a supernatural sense of overwhelming surreal peace came with it and i was able to fall fast asleep. and that peace has never left my life ever since. this was about a week after we first led at 180 and right when some friends of mine started transforming as well. 

when God has me stay up all through the night and shows me the dawn, it always feels so special, like i'm a part of something very very deep and something very very big and important in His heart - i am a part of how He feels. do you know that your every move, action, decision and thought affects how He feels? this is truth which is found in the Song of Songs. we are called to study not just the works of God or the hands and face of God, we are called to know His heart - to study and dive deep into His emotions. deep, deep, deep.

to me, the stars reflect His emotions for me. He speaks to us all in unique ways. the reason why i love romanticism poetry (this is an era not a style) is because nature speaks to me so much of God's love. and it is absolutely interesting and bizarre to read poetry by famous atheist poets who can not seem to deny that through the beauty of this world, there is a Love out there which beckons us. God - the author of romance. No one compares to Him, he is super gings.....

i re-opened this space because i really need to write more and this is a motivation for me. sometimes emotions and memories and feelings are all pent up inside and these days there's a desire to express it in the most beautiful way i can ;P through words and paints and songs i guess. i used to spend quite a lot of time writing (non-academically) every single day and i haven't written anything decent in a long time... words are magic. words mean magic to me! that's why i'm studying writing. words are powerful. magic is powerful. also, it seems cool to have a private blog where only a handful of close friends and family can read, doesn't it? 

i used to sit on my windowsill looking up at the sky a LOT before i sleep - like 30 minutes, meditating on how my Jesus is screaming of His love through those tiny sparkly diamonds in the sky so high above us. again, so so beautiful. not anymore though because now, stars kind of remind me of some bad memories :(  

(hee.. i love it how nowadays when i'm sad - which is in itself quite a distant concept - i'm still quite happy)

just a sidenote, i really love you all :) 

there are a handful of you who can read this! are you feeling very special now? hee hee hee... <3