image by Christopher Sardegna from Unsplash Luke 9: 23 Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me." Taking up the cross was something that only condemned criminals did. When they took that cross up, they knew what it signified; that they were on a path that would end in them leaving this world behind. When Jesus used the cross as a symbol of discipleship, it was a sobering analogy. Prompted by Search the Scriptures, I found myself wondering what it meant to take up your cross daily. Denying your lusts and idols, dying to sins--those should be the first things that come to our mind when we visualize the cross, and what happened to Christ on it, because of us. This should be an ongoing activity every day in our lives, something we are consciously and actively pursuing, and not just an isolated burst of feeling that we experienced on the day we were converted. Together with this comes an awareness of reliance and need on God, since by nature this process requires His help. The cross also becomes a visual image of living each day in the knowledge that we are on the road to death, to an end. Carrying with you a reminder that our time here is temporary, and we're on our way--soon--to a spiritual realm. And not just carrying unwillingly, but voluntarily picking it up each day. Thinking over this, I could see what transformation this would work, at least for myself: Our eyes would be opened to discern true priorities, freeing us from the things that don't really matter, but which we so easily are enslaved by; A heightened appreciation for life and the blessings God has given to us while we are here; Enables us to have more patience, and more loving interactions with others; Helps us to have freedom and peace from worrying too much about the future; Nurtures a more humble, peaceful self-awareness grounded in our purpose and our walk with God; Gives us a heightened sense of purpose and ownership over whatever time, opportunities, or resources we have. The instability, uncertainty, and fears that this pandemic wrought in our lives certainly make it easier to visualize what it means to live each day knowing that death lies ahead of us. But doesn't it always?
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image by Toa Heftiba from Unsplash A while back, I started an e-devotional series taken from the writings of Oswald Chambers on trust. I was searching for guidance on how to grow in trust, in the midst of much uncertainty. I longed so much to have faith in God's will for me, but it just seemed too abstract. I wanted concrete comfort. Concrete guidance on what action to take. I wanted something I could cling to when I was overwhelmed by anxiety. There were two questions in the reflection section that stuck with me and gave me my first probing glimpse at what really was the problem--something we need to understand before we can try to resolve it. What worries and anxieties do I indulge in that reveal my lack of peace? What societies and systems do we build to minimize our need for peace with God? The meaning of "indulge"--a word we use most commonly today to talk about eating desserts, or lax parents. Basically, to knowingly choose something we know is not good for us. I had never thought of anxieties as something I "indulged" in as I always associated that word with pleasant things. But what it made me realize was that I had a choice. Upon close examination I realized that it was true--before I reached the final stage of feeling overwhelmed, there was that moment in the beginning where I actively chose to pursue this train of thought. Sometimes obsessively. Sometimes unnecessarily. And these choices formed a pattern. There was a repeated, regular pattern of anxiety in my life that reflected an underlying problem, greater than the isolated problems in themselves. A lack of peace, making me feel that a.) every problem was of huge consequence, and b.) it was up to me to resolve them, the situation was in my hands for better or for worse. This was the real problem, the root problem. Without acknowledging this, simply thinking that you can break the pattern by willpower, by forcing yourself "not to think", is a naive solution as most of us might already know. As result--that brings us to the second question. We resort to trying all sorts of things to fix ourselves, to restore that sense of equilibrium. We jump into action, because there's a kind of blind, stupid comfort in being able to DO something, to feel like you're actively solving your problem. We "build societies and systems." We seek communities to surround us with support and affirmation, so we won't feel so hurt when others reject or criticize us. We work to make ourselves feel important, needed, loved, in families or groups of friends. Sometimes in damaging and unhealthy ways. We try to create an identity for ourselves affirmed by others, that we can fall back on regardless of what happens to us. Or we try to make sure the problem doesn't happen again. We improve ourselves. We find ways to work better, faster, to be less forgetful, to be more efficient, to be more attractive, or more compelling. We convince ourselves, like consumers buying into the ads they see on TV, that if only we get the latest vacuum cleaner or a cutting-edge smart fridge, our homes will stay clean and well-run. All we need is a better system, better skills. We try harder. These things, promising a shadow of compensation, are what we throw ourselves into, desperately wanting them to work. Sometimes they work. Sometimes they don't. Sometimes they work the first time but don't the next. The key is that they're not the real answer. True freedom only comes with a broadening of perspective, understanding that a.) God's providence INCLUDES--in His mysterious will!--our problems; there are no accidents! and b.) we can turn to Him for guidance on what action to take, and trust that it will work out according to His plan, "for the good for His people." Learning to trust in God is impossible, as abstract fluff as it sounds, if we don't realize that trust in God first requires peace with God. Much of the times, we struggle to trust Him because we are not living in peace with Him. Whether this means that we need to repent and be saved as unbelievers, or whether this means we need to repent of our idols and lukewarmness/backsliding as Christians, peace with God means submitting our lives to Him. If we don't want to accept any other outcome than the one we want, if we refuse to believe that God is good, and continues to be good, even if He doesn't give us what we want--He "gives and takes away; blessed be the name of the Lord"--then we are still living in rebellion against Him. Maybe we've externally submitted our lives to Him. Call ourselves Christians. Go dutifully to church every Sunday and maybe even try to talk about the Gospel sometimes. But we shy away from accepting that the Bible calls us to make hard choices, and that God demands every area of our lives and hearts. Our lusts. Our free time. The times no one sees us, or we don't have to face any consequences. It's only now and then. Such a small thing, He won't mind. We cannot keep a little pet sin or two under the carpet while proclaiming that God is the ruler of our life. Or perhaps we're not at peace with Him because we're not willing to give Him control over everything--everything, but not our love life. Success. Career. Our heartbreak, or happiness. Our dreams (and this was the hardest one I'd been struggling with.) If we are guilty of one or both of these (as the case probably is) how can we truly trust? We are afraid that God will require what we don't want to let go of. We are fighting desperately for control. We are actually in rebellion, yet keeping it under wraps for now as we wait to see how it happens. We are already suspecting Him of not giving us what we want, already picturing Him as the Bad Guy, already unhappy to accept any other plan rather than our own. How could we trust? Trust comes naturally, sweetly, when we are at peace with God. When we are able to say earnestly that we love Him, and seek to love Him more than any other. When we can say humbly that we know His will is better than ours--no "maybes." image by Manki Kim from Unsplash The idea that stress is an unavoidable part of (specifically) Singaporean everyday life is so widely accepted that I was surprised when someone challenged that assumption. On one hand, it is a legitimate reason that our culture doesn’t make it easy to maintain control and balance over your life. The systems and infrastructures in place often are built without any consideration for anything other tha KPI, and are not conducive for people who want more than KPI. Education, workplace culture and expectations, the goals and lifestyle standards and values that our culture subconsciously and implicitly incalcate in us, all these function on the basis that people devote themselves 100% to them. Success, at least within the context of those systems, is not programmed to come otherwise. It's tempting to think the problem is just your culture. I’ve heard people fantasize about how working or living overseas would let them escape from the stress in Singapore, that there’s nothing we can do about it as it’s everywhere, it’s the basis of all our infrastructures, we just have to suck it up. But this minimizes the impact and role of individual responsibility. It’s naïve to think that other people in other cultures don’t face this problem—they do, perhaps manifested differently, but they do. Changing your location is just a quick-fix. Sooner or later you’re going to find yourself feeling stressed again, and the answer is not packing your bags once more. This is my own opinion, but I think of Christ’s words when He called us to “be in the world, not of it.” The importance of the individual witness we have, each in our corner—not isolating ourselves and avoiding the problems in the world, but actively doing what we can to make a difference, wherever we are. The next easiest response to fantasizing about moving overseas is to play the cynic and shrug in fatalistic doom. Just suck it up. Everyone you know is complaining of the same thing, after all. If you don’t want to be broke or an absolute failure you just have to accept being stressed out, right? This again is actually just another way of accepting to, and conforming to, the culture around us—not exactly a very godly culture either, as you can see if you consider its role models, goals, definition of success, and the route to get there. How do we respond to stress? How do we deal with stress and perhaps more importantly, are we unconsciously expecting/reinforcing stress in our lives? Like it or not, the choices you make reflect your priorities, since much of life is about trade-offs/opportunity cost. We can make choices that enable us to live more thoughtfully, more purposefully, more meaningfully; more restfully, more peacefully, with more time for others, with more time for things that matter. It sounds so ideal, doesn’t it? Everyone talks about work life balance, but it’s become just another impossibly unrealistic concept like owning your own car and house for millenials—and a whole lot more abstract. What exactly is work life balance and how do we achieve it? Don’t wait for the perfect job to fall into your lap, a family which doesn’t give you problems, supportive friends who chio (invite out) you at convenient times, an understanding boss, the end of this big project, when you’ve caught up on your sleep debt, when you’ve gotten into the habit of getting up early instead of sleeping through six alarms every morning and rushing out of the door. For most people, most of the time, it’s not a big drastic decision that radically alters your everyday schedule and your plan for the next five years (there are too many “taking off to travel the world for a year how about you?” posts online giving people the wrong impression that it’s all or nothing; either you continue being stressed out or you have to do something radical that usually entails you quitting your job and throwing responsibilities—financial or otherwise—to the wind. That’s nice, Karen, but we can’t all be doing that. If you can do that, well, that’s nice; but for those of us who can’t, does it mean we can’t do anything about our current situation? Whether this boils down to the decisions you make on saving/spending money, the goals you form for yourself, leaving a job or changing the way you work in it, finding alternatives, or managing your time, each choice you make is the same thing—you sacrifice or give up one thing in order to achieve more of the other. Which, and why? Again, “be in the world, not of it;” be the difference. Challenge cultural expectations, when you see a need to challenge the values they're based on. Help others to see alternatives, to think twice instead of simply blindly accepting whatever is thrown at them. Redefine priorities if you need to. Let go of certain unhelpful habits. Think about whether the way you're spending your every day now is something you can thank God for sincerely, something you can present to Him with gladness. Consider that we were made for so much more than than the endless cycle of generating and using money. Remember that our lack of peace, our lack of contentment, even our lack of enjoyment of our lives, reflects our lack of spiritual understanding of Who God is, and what it means to serve Him, to glorify Him. Be the salt and the light. Even if it means you need to sit down and think about how to live more purposefully--not exactly the activity you feel drawn to after a long day, if we're being honest... image by Andre Benz from Unsplash My church recently had our annual church camp, and it was an unspoken understanding that the theme--Living Out Faith in a Stressful World--was uniquely relevant for Singaporean. I don't think I was the only one who went to camp with a pretty strong sense of anticipation for this topic, and I'm thankful for God's timeliness in moving our speaker--Pastor David Yan of Emmanuel Church, New Zealand--to choose this theme. God knows we all needed it. Both collectively, as a small church struggling with all the standard challenges of small churches, and individually, each one dealing with the different burdens of work, school, commitments, family problems, spiritual struggles. I want to share some of the points from the talks which really resonated me, because they were an effective mixture of epiphany, encouragement, self-awareness, and a convicting challenge in what it would mean to apply these truths to your life. First of all, how we handle stress and rest is important as it has a direct influence on our spiritual life. It's foolish, and perhaps even proud, to think otherwise, to imagine that our life is nicely compartmentalized such that the secular and spiritual are as neatly separated as the seaweed and Honey Stars in a child's lunchbox. As such, we can't just shrug off the stress we complain about, avoid dealing purposefully with it, on the grounds that "I just have to get used to it," "life is like that," "what can I do anyway?" or even "I don't have the time/energy to think about that." (though honestly it is a legitimate challenge; feeling, at your most overwhelmed, that you don't even have the emotional/mental energy or capacity to be thinking about how to deal with stress; that you're stretched to the utmost already just keeping up with every day, just to keep going, just surviving. That is undoubtedly the worst.) God cares for us. He calls us to be resting in Him, not living in frantic activity, one nervous breakdown away. Living out faith in a stressful world--how, in our individual contexts, do we do this? How do we make a difference, be a difference to the others around us? Secondly. Rest can be physical, but in many cases in our first-world context today, it is also emotional and mental. Amen. Did this resonate with me. Feeling like a wimp because I wasn't facing the kind of physical stress that I see people like my sister, who works in healthcare with its long and draining hours, only added to the emotional and mental stress I was struggling with. Not being able to acknowledge this as a legitimate form of stress, and instead feeling like I was a greater failure for not being able to handle this, were just some things that made it harder. But truly. Not just from work--emotional and mental stress from people and relationship problems has a huge impact on me as well, and on others, as I heard during my discussion group. It ruins your mood, your concentration, your whole day. It burdens you, haunting your mind, so that even when you're supposed to be resting you're worrying about that conversation, about that text, about what they said, replaying it constantly, trying to analyze what to do. This kind of stress is also what Jesus promised us rest from. Acknowledging that, and turning to Him, will help us more than if we try to forget about it, frustratedly wonder why we can't stop thinking about it, despair over our inability to maintain our peace of mind--or heart. Thirdly--what have we been defining as rest, and do we need to redefine our definitions? To be honest, this was phrased quite differently in the discussion questions: "What are the unnecessary activities that we can eliminate from our lives?" However, my personal takeaway went a bit deeper. I realized that often when work--or studies--is stressing us out, we feel strongly entitled to our rest time, our me-time. And we usually lapse into the most extreme, passive sort of rest, the sort that is the easiest to slip into; aimlessly browsing videos, scrolling through social media, looking for entertainment on our screens, generally nua-ing on an appropriate surface (think bed or sofa or even floor in some cases; I plead guilty.) For those unfamiliar with the term, nua is a very apt Singlish term, derived from Hokkien, which denotes laziness, idling, or just generally being a bum. However, unlike those unimaginative English terms, nua denotes a physical change of state, from solid to a pasty/gooey/semi-solid state (think slime, or bread dough.) If that isn't graphic enough I don't know what is. Singlish appreciation post aside--I unconsciously think this is rest, simply because it's so opposite of what I associate with work/stress. However, upon serious examination--at least for myself--it's really more escapism. Distraction. It's not rest in the sense that I'm not refreshed and recharged, ready to go back to work after it...far from it! If anything it's the opposite; having to exit nua mode, to return to solid state, so to speak, is torturous. You're only more reluctant to return to work. I feel entitled to my nua time because I argue that it's rest I deserve and need after all that stress, but really it's more like a form of distraction, trying (only fleetingly) to escape from the mental and emotional stress. With this deluded sense of entitlement in mind, often I get annoyed when anything impinges or interrupts that nua time; seeing that as "rest," I get impatient with others, start to equate spending time with others, relationships, as merely other non-essential energy-sappers. I don't know if this is partly an introvert problem, though it's definitely mainly original sin, but you start to live with a very self-centered, selfish/miserly attitude towards your stock of energy, as I discussed previously. So, nua consciously. It's not necessarily evil--there's a place for it, as with lumping--but see it for what is is. I've realized that rest, specifically emotional and mental rest, is not about the actual energy levels as much as priorities. It may even be simply a change in activities. It may simply be a change of heart, or attitude. It may simply be encouragement from someone, from what you read today, from your prayer time. Just like how this camp was for me--a refreshing mental and emotional rest from the constant worries and mental burden of work. For just those few days, I felt more rested than I had for a long time. Even though camp is not exactly what you would associate with rest, at least if you're on the camp committee. Lack of sleep, keeping an eye on the schedule, last minute changes, cleaning up, facilitating discussion groups and activities...these kept me busy, yet I was conscious of a very real sense of peace and rest throughout the camp, that left me refreshed and encouraged when it was time to go back to work. Fourthly, and lastly--rest is found in a person, not a place. At least in Singapore, where travelling is a common and even convenient norm (the British didn't choose us as a trading port for nothing) so many people I know live for their overseas trip every year, the holiday getaway that keeps them motivated for the slogging at work the rest of the time. The #tbt and scenic beach photos that keep reappearing throughout the year on their Instagram even when it's been months since their trip, as if their actual day-to-day life now doesn't count, doesn't matter. In fact, whenever you see one of those photos appear it usually means they're feeling the stress more than ever, craving for that getaway even more. I feel more sympathy than criticism here, if you feel attacked; I can actually relate, believe it or not, even though I may not have the same 9-5 job challenges or experiences that you face. What strikes me poignantly about this phenomenon is how urgently the yearning for rest, the desire to escape, becomes. It's hardly a matter of which country you go to, or how; getting away from Singapore and the work stress that you associate with it emerges as the goal instead. And, more sobering, the bleak realization that even when you manage to escape, these happy hours are only so many percentage of your whole year. Don't you feel that something's wrong, that we aren't meant to be living like this, spending the majority of our lives yearning and enduring for brief reprieves? Surely the answer isn't throwing up your hands and saying "Well, but this is Singapore! We're compulsively stressed out, due to our culture and workplace habits and education system and etc...it's as much a requirement of being Singaporean as National Service is for boys!" Which is pretty much the response I've often heard, the end-all conclusion to the frequent discussion of mutual stress levels. Rest is in a person. Not a place. I believe this because of real-life examples I've seen, people who made certain choices as a conscious effort to live differently; people who are in the same situation as others, yet respond differently, with grace and peace and joy. It's possible. God didn't call us to an earthly kingdom, but to a spiritual one, at least during our time here. Until Heaven, we're all on the same earth, and no matter where we are, the same challenges, the same root problems and temptations, confront us all. Rest, whether due to your attitude, your heart; due to people who support and care for you; but most of all, in a Person--in He who promised us, Come unto Me, all you who are weary and heavy-ladened, and I will give you rest. |
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