Tumblr Posts #2

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Agapimu Allelios: To Love One Another With His Love

I cannot help but say that God has given me such wonderful and thoughtful friends. Birthday bagel: Bridget and I were in school when we took this photo on the mac:) Bridget+Kelly bought me my favourite Starbucks bagels with cream cheese, a whole bag of fruit (to help me along on my diet) and ironically, Kelly gave me a whole basket of chocolatey goodness and japanese bowls :)

My theatre mates definitely remembered and the presents+birthday hugs they gave me were lovely as well! Cami made small clay figurines of Oscar Wilde and his works for me. I can’t stop looking at the details on the figurines and thinking about the effort she put in! I am loved and appreciated very dearly, yes I am.

So I went to St. Andrew’s Village to attend pre-camp on my birthday and it was as if God had planned my birthday personally - because my churchies surprised me with a cake, sang HAPPY BIRTHDAY and made me wear a shiny floppy cap as I stood there shocked with a :O face! And the next minute I knew, I had tears in my eyes. I felt so darn loved. 

“We bought you a fruit cake because we know you’re on a diet!” - Nicole :D

<3

Worship Practice

This is my group TOLA. We have a kickass cheer, won all our day games, won first for Night Games and had lotsa yoghurt during External Games - and I have to say that God’s grace really came upon this group throughout these four days. Morning Devotions was a time that I will never forget. 

Never forgetting these babes especially Claire, who has been such an encouraging friend and amazing listener.

J1s: I’ll never know how much God loves us - it cannot be explained nor fathomed, only felt with our hearts.

Now I don’t know what to do and I don’t wanna go back to school.

I come back blessed by God through our BRMC YOUTH DEC CAMP 2010. This camp had a prayer room set aside for us and I visited it on the third day of camp. There, God spoke to me in the most gracious, most gentlest whisper my heart has ever known. He told me to surrender, to let go and all will be set right again. Right then and right there, all I had to do was to cry out to Him, sit at His feet to be quiet and listen. To listen. And I whispered “Abba” over and over again and His Spirit ministered to me in a way that made me cry - not out of sorrow but tears of joy for the first time in my life. I put my hand on my heart and said to myself “Liling, I love you”. And I don’t have to fear any longer because the Lord is sovereign over every situation that seems to be larger than life. 

Nah-uh, the Lord is greater than all our circumstances and provides His Word and Spirit to be with us through the valley of the shadow of death.

Lifeng prayed for me. “And Liling, sometimes you don’t see the light because, well, maybe there is no light. But God promises to provide His rod and staff that will guide you through the dark valley. And you can choose to hold onto it but if you don’t, then, it’s gonna be more painful lah.” 

God has taught me to be obedient and it is true that when we disobey God, it is painful for us. He has taught me to tolerate others and to love them because after all, Judas betrayed Jesus with a kiss. And Kristen reminded me that if I am walking hand in hand with Pain, Jesus has suffered the ultimate death and taken on my stripes. 

How can I stand here and not be moved by You, O Lord?

(2 months ago)

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dear you:

they say us on horseback and centaurs will never scream green murder

but mind you,

that my throat is sore and my arrow’s aim is wrong:

it is in every direction that you throw my heart towards

and when you asked me why

all i wanted to do was try

but reciprocation does not come

with the safest certainty my heart longs for

you are

all that i’ve ever known, all that i’ve ever wanted

but i will not say it

because you do not see me

the way i see you.

i test the waters and i dip my feet into you-

icicles break and my blood churns

please will you just

pick me, choose me, love me

already?

(2 months ago)

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You see all my Light and you Love my Dark.

Many times we try to be someone else. We search for our identities in pretty faces and that golden, diamond-studded personality because we don’t want to be labelled as ‘Normal’ or ‘Ordinary’. Horrid, rigid, heavy, porcelain Masks. We even take the time to plan how we’re going to react to certain situations because we want to come off as strong, emotionally secure people.

Then maybe we’ll glow with a charm that will sweep everyone off their feet when we walk down the hallway at school. Then maybe we’ll gain more acceptance and friends. But all I’ve really wanted to do is break down and cry.

What I’ve been shown throughout October is that I can be entirely myself - and people will love you for who you are if you accept yourself for who you are, even in your weakest state. Having no regrets about who you are. Presenting yourself as “Hey this is me, take it or leave it. Either way, I’m still gonna be here for you.” 

Me + Van<3

Me + Kel + Shawn + Lyn

Belle + Char + Cara + Me

Kelly + Me + Bridget <3

People want real friends. I want real friends. I’m someone who has to be reassured over and over again so I look to my close friends to ask them for advice when hanging out with new people. And all that they’ve got for me is “You look fine. Absolutely fine. Don’t worry!” And I believe them with all my heart.

The words “Fine” and “Don’t worry” are small but they carry such important weightage that if you hear them over and over again, you may actually find yourself walking out of that venomous mindset of insecurity. Because worrying is equivalent to lacking in faith and giving credit to mountains of doubt. And doubt is what hinders us from moving forward to scaling new heights in our lives. 

Bacon + Junhao + Me + Quan + Jon (my band, What Bunnies Do <3)

Well, I’ve wanted this to be a post without God in it but that’s impossible because His fingerprints are marked on every minute speck of creation everywhere I turn. And I see the Lord in every problem - He is in every solution and His Spirit rings and resonates ever so wonderfully in the word “Grace”.

And grace has picked me up every time I beat myself up or try to take my own life. Every time I feel inadequate, I see His grace moving and working in my life. Grace has enabled me to shine as a thespian and it has provided me with so much love and support from the people around me.

Harsha + Me + Ziying

(Almost) Everyone in Theatre <3

Because it is grace (undeserved favour) that has saved mankind from the Devil’s condemnation. It is grace that has given me real friends in Theatre Compass and even provided me with a group of Christian friends in my Music Appreciation module without my knowledge. It is grace that gets us home every day of the week. And whether you see it or not when you have a bad day, His favour and love whispers its stark, sheer reality everywhere we go. 

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yknow what:

i don’t wanna be someone who stops dreaming big things, ever

i don’t ever wanna dismiss these reckless waves of madness that occasionally crash upon me and the people around me 

i don’t ever wanna give in to the social norm or be someone who looks back at her mistakes and slaps the girl i was before 

kill that mindset: i will not regret what i have done wrong in - it has made me WHO I AM

i won’t lose myself just bcos the world thinks i’m nuts

i’ll go nuts and be absolutely ridiculous if i want to (fuckyeah)

i’ll be hot red and striking neon yellow, i’ll be your deepest indigo and your most terrifying black

i am made this way with imperfection and vigour rushing through my veins, therefore I AM.

(5 months ago)

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I Don’t Need To See It To Believe It:

“I am convinced that there is no other and that if the world has indeed, as I have said, been built of sorrow, it has been built by the hands of Love, because in no other way could the soul of man, for whom the world was made, reach the full stature of its perfection.”

— De Profundis by Oscar Wilde

A friend typed on MSN that “we are our own gods.”

If we are our own gods, why can’t we hold ourselves together? Why can’t we save this warring world?

Why do we break down, why do we fail, why do we get depressed or commit suicide?

Why do we kill, fall on our knees and with a parched mouth and dry tongue scream to the Heavens in our distress - feeling so cornered everywhere we turn that somehow we consider what we have never considered before - to cry out to a God that we cannot see?

And he said that “that’s because we can’t maintain ourselves.”

Then there must be a Repair Station. There must beRestoration and Renewal. A drive that keeps us going. A drive with a Purpose. 

Then there must be a Light that never goes out, that saves us even though we’ve fallen to the depths of the earth - even if we have, He is there.

Sometimes I find it hard to believe that His Love can cleanse us whiter than the snow - and as Oscar Wilde writes that Christ was “a Lover for whose love the whole world was too small.”

But I have tasted and I have seen - not with the tongue or my eyes but with the Spirit that I have received: the Spirit that is at the core of my soul, that moves to “the rhythm of Your grace”; the Spirit that breathes in the beautiful fragrance and knowledge of Christ being my hope, shelter and reward in this broken world. 

The Spirit that burns within me with the realisation that a little sparrow’s breast rises and falls - it breathes with the God-given gift of Life!

Have we not noticed that our intellect is higher than allthe animals and creatures of this earth?

Have we not realised that with the witnessing of evil spirits that there is also a God?

Have we not experienced an emptiness in our souls that longs for a Love that is faithful, that sees us through all the storms in Life? And as we find it - our spirits rejoice because we have found it; we are Complete.

It is the Spirit that speaks forth the truth, that convicts us of sin which then lets us understand the situation we are in and finally peels off the scales from our eyes to let us see that our hardened hearts and pride hinder us fromsurrendering and receiving the beautiful gift of Salvation. To even say that Salvation is beautiful is an UNDERSTATEMENT. Salvation is the very solution to our problem. My soul could faint and even kill to be cleansed of the sin that has marred the very flesh of Christ - the sin that has devoured me and thrown me into a rut and just to have Jesus reach out to save me: it is indescribable.

To be saved and freed from condemnation: the word ‘condemnation’ rings in my head and sends chills through my entire body… It is Salvation that the world has been searching for: that Wilde himself knew existed but turned his back against it (he worshipped material things and believes that spirituality can come only from his creating and not of external things). 

And there is no place too far off where God cannot find us.

Not even in the sickest thoughts or the darkest corners of our hearts and minds.

Because He is the God who saves, the God who renews old souls and the God who provides breakthroughs - He who brings the morning light when the night has been too much for us to bear.

“Your light broke through my night; restored exceeding joy.”

How great You are.

(4 months ago)

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“All art is quite useless.”

I have been studying De Profundis by Oscar Wilde over a span of six hours and found many philosophies that I agreed and, inevitably, disagreed with. I read the first half of it last night and I started crying like mad in front of the computer screen because of my fascination at his tragic life. Today I stood in the shower thinking about how I had first reacted with disgust to the truth about Wilde’s perverse relations in the Victorian underground. Then I saw the love that Christ had displayed through the cross and remembered that even Wilde himself understood and wrote that the world is made as much for everyone as it is made for him. That Christ loved all - and he himself couldn’t deny that fact. Wilde wrote: “Society takes upon its right to inflict appalling punishment on the individual, but it also has the supreme vice of shallowness, and fails to realise what it has done.” “But while Christ did not say to men, ‘Live for others,’ he pointed out that there was no difference at all between the lives of others and one’s own life.” So I told myself, “Never again shall I judge a person that way.” Because unfortunately, I too, have the capability and competency to do the things Wilde did in secret behind the prying eyes of society. We’re all human. And that opens up my eyes to insight and the depth of the verse that has been picked for December Camp, 1 John 1:7-8 which says “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.” Yet I cannot help but smite how Wilde wrote that Christ’s secret was using “imaginative sympathy” - it is as if saying Christ was a thespian or artist who used imaginative sympathy to twist situations to his own advantage, to gain the sinner’s soul! It is as if he was saying “As a thespian who is considered successful upon moving the audience to tears when he portrays a character that is drowned in despair, so was Christ successful in using imaginative sympathy - which is the secret to capture the heart of the world.” It’s like saying Christ’s empathy was fake. In this way, Wilde did not fix his eyes upon the problem: that the sinner could find no way to be saved - besides what Christ had done at Calvary and that Christ was fully Man and fully God. If Wilde could not understand himself and led his own self headfirst into tragedy, how much more could he understand God who is Spirit and the Maker of the universe? God’s ways cannot be fathomed by our tiny mind. Oh well. Still, he was a true aesthete, the best of his kind:) Wilde died on my birthday (30 November) in the year 1900. I really do admire his brilliant mind:) Do read De Profundis if you can!

(4 months ago)

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