———————————————————————————————————–

The other day, I ran into a colleague, who is an ABC (American Born Chinese), in the hallway of my working place. He was very excited to tell me how great the “Jeremy Lin” is in recent NBA games. Initially, I was not paying much attention to his excitement because I am neither a NBA fan nor I had much knowledge about him. Then, the 2^nd day, he stopped by my office again to urge me to watch Jeremy’s game that night because Jeremy had amazed most of the participated teams by consistently scoring high points. I hate to discourage him because I have no TV subscription at my home… 🙂

After I checked around, I learned a lot about Jeremy’s background. Most of you probably have already known more than I did and I am not going to repeat here. The interesting phenomenon is there are many creative phrases such as “Lin + something” are floating around the internet, media and news. One of them called “Linsanity” caught my eye. It is a very creative way to describe how people were crazy about Jeremy Lin.

Jeremy’s story is somewhat alike the mobile phone salesperson, Paul Potts, who became an overnight celebrity after attended the Britain’s TV show “Got Talent”.  The flooding spotlights and media coverage on both of them, to a degree, is somewhat insane. To Jeremy, it is the phenomenon of “insanity” from other people that created the word of “L + insanity (Large Insanity)”.  This also gives us a picture of what this world’s view is. The overwhelmed spotlights and media, however, did not tempt Jeremy’s faith away from our Lord, as I have learned. This attracts a lot of interest to people and the media. This is the sanity aspect of the “Lin + Sanity”.

I also learned that Jeremy is from a good Christian family. His parents led him to the Lord in his young age and continue to accompany with him throughout his growing years. This reminds me of young Timothy who was brought up by his mother and grandmother into a person of fearing God in his youth (2 Timothy 1:5). Later he became a dear brother, an assistant, a co-worker and a successor to the apostle Paul. It tells me how important the role of parents is.

Most of us have a name that was given by our parents. It represents parents’ anticipation or expectation. Jeremy, for example, is a short name for Jeremiah who was a major prophet in Old Testament time. In the Bible, the books of Jeremiah and Lamentations give us a picture how he undertook God’s assignment and how he had followed His expectations closely. My dear brothers and sisters, for us, we have a common name too. It is called “Christian”. In the same token, we were expected by our Heavenly Father to follow our Lord Jesus Christ closely too. How about God’s name? Bible told us that His name is above all names and there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved. (Acts 4:12b).

My dear brothers and sisters, are you insane? If yes, it should be for our Lord. And, “Lord + insanity” should represent how crazy we are about our Lord. May His name always mentioned by us to others when we have opportunities.

——————————————————————————–

Last Monday, I went to a local towing company to collect my personal belongs from my wrecked car.  After negotiated with the woman in the front desk, I wasn’t happy about their “profit from my misfortune (趁火打劫)” practice on the towing expense of my car. Especially when I looked at the tragic sight of my car – engine hood was crooked up, radiator was crushed to meet the engine block, headlights were gone, front bumper and battery were punched – I felt heavy in my heart.

I still remember when my old station wagon threw in the towel under a cold winter, I knew it is time for me to look for a “new” car. Weeks later, we purchased our family’s very first brand new car. Since then, this new car has served my family well. For years, she just like an old solider went through numerous battles and endured many wounds. In the end, however, she still has to succumb to her unavoidable fate – going to the junk yard.

Most of us may consider our first love, which could be a boyfriend or a girlfriend, a new car or a new house, etc., memorable. Because, it was the first time that our raw, pure and deep affection onto our first love. Seldom would we forget our affection even after years, I think.

In our spiritual journey, there is a similar thing too. We have our “first love” who is our Lord Jesus. His unfathomable love attracts us deeply when we first met Him. That love draws us close to Him and motivates us to serve Him afterwards. However, as time goes on, our love to Him may fade gradually; especially under the heavy influence of the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, as apostle John indicated (1 John 2:16). This brings my mind to the book of Revelation. In there we learned that our Lord warned the Church in Ephesus that they have forsaken their first love (Revelation 2:4). Therefore, the Lord wanted them to remember from where they have fallen; repent and do the first works, or else He will come to them quickly and remove their lampstand from its place—unless they repent.

By experience, we know how limited is our love to others, not even mention our love to the Lord. The warning posted by the book of Revelation reminds us that we could forsake our first love if we are not pay attention to it. We have to keep pace with our Lord consistently and ask our Lord to protect us from the lust of this world.

My dear brothers and sisters, “Walk by Faith” instead of “Walk by Sight” is the only way that we can keep pace with our Lord and have our deep affection to Him continuously. We saw the consequence of Israelites’ wandering in the wilderness for 40 years without entering the land of rest (Canaan) because of their “Walk by Sight” instead of walking by faith in the LORD. Let’s once again be reminded by the Holy Spirit:

“We have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original conviction firmly to the very end.「我們若將起初確實的信心，堅持到底，就在基督裡有分了」(Hebrews 3:14)”

——————————————————————————————–

Last Friday, my old car was wrecked by a rear-ended accident at local area. Even I was not the driver involved, I still could identify with that kind of uncontrollable and traumatic experience. It was a few years ago during a morning rush hour, I was stopping at a traffic light and a car rear-ended me. As soon as my car was hit, my daughter who was in the backseat said, “Oh, oh”. The uncontrollable feel came when I saw my car was pushed and skidded ahead. Fortunately, I didn’t hit another car in my front. The traumatic feel arrived when I saw the appalling scenes of devastation after got out of my car – bumper was damaged, tail lights were broken and trunk lid was crooked. I thank God for His protection because we were not injured personally during the accident.

The accident from last Friday, I saw God’s protection once again upon my family. I don’t want to say that I am happy with the situation but I am very grateful to see that nobody got hurt in the accident.  Besides, the accident helps us to get rid of the old car, which my wife has complained it for a while 🙂

In this kind of situation, I was always reminded by apostle Paul’s experience that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose (Romans 8:28). In fact, I tend to think our heavenly Father is watching over us all the times. His fatherly love is beyond our imagination. Through many incidents or events occurred in our life, He wants us to learn from mistakes and grow like His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ. Even as painful as it is in the process, we have to recognize that His will dictates our life. In the Gospel of John, chapter 15, Jesus told us that He is the grape vine and we are branches. Only remains in Him then we can bear fruits. It is the action of remaining “in Him” that gives us source, nourishment and courage to live our daily life.  Recently, I came across a good illustration of what we can have to remain in Him. It is said that in Christ we will have:

A life that can never die,

A love that can never be fathomed,

A peace that can never be understood,

A joy that can never be diminished,

A rest that can never be disturbed,

A hope that can never be disappointed,

A light that can never be darkened,

A glory that can never be clouded,

A spiritual resource that can never be exhausted.

Since it is in Christ that we will have a peace that can never be understood by other people, I could now better understand why I was at peace with the situation of last Friday’s accident without as grouchy as before. 🙂

—————————————————————————————–

In the past few days, I have to make many international calls due to a family matter. Because I just switched from landline to IP phone system, in order to avoid the horrendous charge from Verizon, I was worried about sound quality of the IP phone connection. After several calls later, the quality seem to hold up and I am satisfied – clear and no echo, at least.

Today’s technology is amazingly convenient. It can connect you to your friends and families through phones, internet emails, facebook, etc. No wonder, it is a worldwide “Web”. Frigyes Karinthy was a Hungarian author, playwright, poet, journalist, and translator. He was the first proponent of the “Six Degrees of Separation” concept, in his 1929 short story “Chains”, according to Wiki. His proposed idea is that two individuals in the world are connected through, at most, five acquaintances. Therefore, if you have five acquaintances then you are connected with others 🙂

Talking to my colleagues in the hallway at my working place the other day, we were surprised to see someone we knew moves to a high-level management position, so fast. The conclusion we have is that he is well connected. I still remember when I came to my job; my manager taught me one thing. He said, “You should not be working all day long at your office without coming out to interact with other people. You have to make connections!”  I think he is right in a sense that we all need to be connected.

I think we all need to have a connection with others. However, we have to be careful on what kind of connection we are trying to build or cultivate. Motivation is the key to our connection with others because our motivation drives our time and effort. We can spend a lot of time to build up a connection with others because we want to be his / her friend or we want to be visible to him or her. In the end, our motivation defines our behavior and satisfaction or dissatisfaction. When we are focusing on personal gain in building up connections, we may find ourselves in a burdened situation. However, the burden feeling would be light and easy if we are focusing on God’s kingdom (Matthew 11:30). This is because we have a connection to our Lord. Through this connection, we have infinite resource and energy to lift up our burden and energize the connection that we are trying to build with others. Without the source of our Lord, our connection cannot hold up and would be interrupted frequently.

My dear brothers and sisters, do you have a connection with our Lord? Is this connection always “on” without noises or echo?  It is my prayer that we will maintain a consistent connection with Him daily and receive His manna from heaven to power up our connection with others without interruption. Because “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights” (James 1:17a)

Disclaimer: The sharing is pure from my personal view; therefore, please don’t take it to be absolute. Thanks.

——————————————————————————————–

Lunch time, two brothers are arguing who should be the one get the apple on the table. Mommy sees it and thinks it is a good opportunity for a spiritual lesson. She said, “You two are brothers, you should learn from Jesus – What will Jesus do (WWJD), if He were sitting with you in your case? I think He will let His brother to have the apple”. The elder brother of the two then said, “Kevin, you now would be Jesus!”

This is an interesting and enlightened story from a Radio broadcast that I just heard recently. There is a mentality of “You do it!” prevails in today’s environment. This mentality is in current church environment also. Oftentimes, we see a lacking in areas of church serving and ministries. Instead of jumping into it ourselves, we would like other people to do it. Isn’t this ironic if we are all in the same family of God?

In recent daily Bible study, we once again read the account of God wanted Moses to lead Israelites out of Egypt, after Moses saw the miracle of burning bushes.  God said to Moses, “Now therefore, go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall say.  現在去 罷 ， 我必賜你口才 ，指教你所當說的話 (Exodus 4:12)”  What was Moses’ reaction to God? But he said, “O my Lord, please send by the hand of whomever else You may send. 摩西說 ： 主阿 ，你願意打發誰 ，就打發誰去罷！(Exodus 4:13)” Moses used all kind of excuses to turn down God. In his mind, he might be thinking, “God, why don’t you do it yourself?”  Isn’t this the same mentality we have regularly?

The other problem we usually have is the mentality of “Only me is doing it”. Last Sunday I shared with some of you Elijah’s good fight. If you continue to read through 1 Kings, you will find that after Elijah performed the great battle against Baal’s prophets to appeal the undecided Israelites, he ran for his life and he complained to God:

He replied, “I have been very zealous for the LORD God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too.” 他說，我為耶和華萬軍之 神大發熱心‧因為以色列人背棄了你的約，毀壞了你的壇，用刀殺了你的先知，只剩下我一個人，他們還要尋索我的命‧(1 Kings 19:10)

Can God do it Himself? Absolutely! We know that it is our blessing to be called by Him and can partake His ministry. So, brothers and sisters, the mentality of “You do it” or “Only one left” is a danger to our spiritual life. May our Lord remind us daily to serve Him joyfully….

——————————————————————————————–

One of the early mornings, I was dropping off my kids at high school. On my way back, I saw an interesting scene on a car – there are a few pieces of giant black eyelash were sticking out of headlights of a Volkswagen. Due to the round dome design of the headlights, they look just like two giant eye balls with eyelashes. Wow, this is the first time I saw such an interesting and creative idea for a car. It does beautify the car even though it may not be practical or may be dangerous to other drivers on the road due to distraction.

Eyelash is a short stiff hair that grows in a row from the edge of the eyelid.  It provides at least two functions, one is beautifying and the other is protection. Ladies would be more interested in beautifying than protection, I think, since there are so many cosmetics for eyelashes on the market. For gentlemen, the function of practical protection is probably considered more important than beautifying.  This tells me that men and women have a rather different focus on things. Actually this is one of the wonders God created for us – we see different things and complement each other.

In this world, there are a lot of things that is beautiful but impractical. You can argue that whether it is practical or not is depending upon personal preference. To some degree, I agree. However, to me, a thing that is beautiful but impractical is usually for the purpose of decoration. Some of them may not be harmful but would not be of useful to us either. For example, is our belief (faith) like a decoration that is beautiful but not practical? If it is, then we are in danger. A decorative religion has NO life inside and it is bounded to wither – it wouldn’t grow and it couldn’t affect any other life except negatively. Besides, we are living in a society that is focusing on our personal image more than genuine quality of life. Admittedly, there is nothing wrong to be looking good. But, the danger comes when it becomes “decorative” because of over focus on it.

One of my friends taught me about the answer to the question of “What is the chief end of man?” – “To glorify God, and to enjoy Him for ever.”  It is quite enlightening. In fact, Rev. C.H. Spurgeon summarized it even further, “The chief end of man in this life and in the next is to please God the Maker”.  This is quite true and it explains the practical purpose of our life. The author of Ecclesiastes told us that God has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. (神造萬物，各按其時成為美好‧又將永生安置在世人心裡‧﹝永生原文作永遠﹞然而神從始至終的作為，人不能參透. 傳道書 3:11)

God created beautiful things for us and He also wants us to know Him personally. Without the practical purpose of knowing Him, we will miss the big piece of our life – the eternity in our heart. So, my brothers and sisters, it is our practical purpose to please God and let’s live a life that is worthy of His calling….

Happy Chinese New Year!

———————————————————————————————

Walking through a breezeway connected in between two buildings at my work place, I came to windows of another building facing along the Hudson River, during my lunch break. I then sat down around a table and enjoyed a nice view of the scenery across the River. My memory took me back to a previous experience that I had with my family at NYC.

We were sitting around a table and looking out of the window of a restaurant to view NYC’s famous high-rise buildings moving around us (i.e., the restaurant was swiveling). To me, it is a kind of exotic dining experience. This excursion was highly recommended by my wife, based on her prior experience, in order to entertain our in-laws who visited us at that time to have an experience of good food with a good view. Even with her prior knowledge, however, we still spent quite a while in locating the restaurant called “The View”. Funny thing is there were NOT that many New Yorkers around the Time Square knew the place when we approached them. I thought it might be due to the holidays. The not-so-good part is we didn’t make a reservation beforehand. So, we ended up having to wait in a long line due to the popularity of the restaurant. The restaurant was packed but food was good and “the view” was even better. Overall, I would say it is worthwhile. But, let me put a disclaimer here first: It is NOT my intention, whatsoever, to promote the restaurant and I certainly have no association with it.

The experience of “The View” reminds me of our spiritual journey. When we first met our Lord, we may find that the view of Him is so glorious and majestic that how can it be for Him to substitute for us on the cross. Actually from the Bible, we learned that it is His beauty that King David was longing for in his psalm – he asked from God to let him gaze His beauty (瞻仰他的榮美) all the days of his life (Psalm 27:4).  After we received Him as our Lord, we were sanctified. Thus, our view of things started to change accordingly – our focus started to become more Christ centric. The Bible tells us that He opened our spiritual eye so we can see things the way He sees. However, the devil is using every possible means to put a veil over our view. He tempts us with splendor of all the kingdoms of this world in order to sway our focus from God. In our daily Bible reading, we read that Jacob was running away from his father-in-law, Laban, with his household and belongs because God instructed him to leave, in viewing of his mistreatments by Laban. His wife Rachel, however, stole the household idols from her father, Laban (Genesis 31:19), thinking that she could get blessings from those idols. This is a warning to us that sometimes we might mix idols with our belief to cloud our view and this is exactly the devil wants us to do. Are we aware of the scheme from the evil one? Can we resist his “view”? It is worth us to guard our heart because everything we do flows from it (Proverbs 4:23).

——————————————————————————————-

It was back to my high school years from my English class that I learned the terminology of DIY (Do-It-Yourself) the first time. Years later, I had the opportunity to come to the States alone for study. I finally realize what DIY really means – I need to wash clothes by myself, cook my own meals, study by myself, deal a lot of things, by myself, etc…. Of course, you can argue that this is just a growing process and should be called “Training for Independence” 🙂 Well, not quite. The DIY became more challenging when it comes to the task of repairing my problematic and aged station wagon, in order to avoid some repair costs from my tight budget. It was a dirty DIY job but it is also a rewarding one, sometimes. When my wife joined me two years later, the DIY expanded to another spectrum – kitchen. She sometimes would crave for some of the delicacies from our home town without luck because we were located in a remote country side. At that time, she has to learn how to make them by herself either with friends’ help or from book of recipes. This is another type of DIY that we didn’t realize it before. 🙂

Later on, the area of DIY for home improvement came into light when we had our own place. There were always some spots in our home that require our attention – sometimes it was minor but other times it was a big project. I have been enjoying those DIYs. The excitement comes from the surprises I encountered – from missing a part to all kind of silly mistakes. They were valuable and it reveals how fallible a person that I’d be. Of course, there is a side effect on my DIY too – my finished work may not look as professional as it could be and therefore wife may complain once a while. Despite of this, I learned a lot though; especially thinking of Clint Eastwood’s quote in his movie, “A man has got to know his limitations”… ha, ha, ha…

The DIY mania is an integral part of American culture. You can get an idea from why “Home Depot” and “Lowes” stores were so welcome across the country. The goodness of the culture is it promotes business opportunities and man’s sense of achievement (成就感). I am kind of thinking this sense of achievement was embedded by the Creator of the universe – our God. Perhaps, it might imitate the sense of the word recorded in the book of Genesis, “神看著是好的(God saw that it was good)”  The biggest difference is we were NOT creating anything from scratch; we were trying to restore something to its good-as-new condition in our DIY repairs; or, we were trying to add / improve something in our DIY improvements by utilizing existing materials. Therefore, we were limited by what we have learned and our own understandings.

The danger of DIY, however, comes from indulging in one’s ability without realizing it. It creates a false impression of “See, I am good!”  The net is a prideful heart generated and it couldn’t listen to others’ suggestion. Therefore, a right balance between the sense of achievement and prideful heart is absolutely essential if you want to enjoy your DIY work.

In our spiritual journey, we need to have the habit of DIY too. We need to study God’s words and to spend time in prayer by ourselves with Him in order to develop a close relationship with Him. This in turn will give us a sense of achievement (fulfilling feel) with our Lord. On the other hand, we also need to know our limitations by co-working with our brothers and sisters in His family. This I call it a DIO (Do-It-Ourselves) work because our Lord wants us:

From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work. 全身都靠他聯絡得合式、百節各按各職、照著各體的功用、彼此相助、便叫身體漸漸增長、在愛中建立自己。(Ephesians 4:16)

May we all have the DIY and DIO mentality throughout the year…..

—————————————————————————————————–

Last week, I was relaxing at home and realized that I need to use the spare time to do something productive – I decided to fix the reverse indicator light problem from my old car. I spent two afternoons trouble-shoot it trying to find a solution for the problem. Follow some advices from the internet, I was able to find the problem area is from a “neutral safety switch” mounted on the transmission case of my car. The function of the switch acts as an indicator on which gear (P, R, N, D, 2, 1) the transmission is. In addition, it prevents the car from starting if it is not either on the “neutral” gear or on the “park” position. Due to the old age of the switch, it took me a while to dismount it from the transmission case while the car is on the park position. After the removal, I dismantled the switch and cleaned inside of it and reassemble it. In the middle of putting it back and tightening it on the transmission case, I accidentally turned the switch arm and the transmission was switched from “park” to “neutral” position. As soon as I realized that, the car is moving downhill already. I was panic because it is going to run into my neighbor’s house across the street. Fortunately, my sons and a friend’s son were there at that time to help. So, I jumped into the car and tapped onto the brake to stop the car right before it hits my neighbor’s mailbox. Then, my sons and the friend’s son helped me to push the car back to my driveway. Whew… it was a close call and a fiasco that I was not prepared for – I thought it was good enough to put on the e-brake without putting on wheel chokers.

I think every life experience could be a lesson for us to learn, no matter how trivial it is. Firstly, I could see the importance of the gear indicator – it tells us where is our gear position would be – in Drive (D) or in Reverse (R) or in Park (P), etc.  A “wrong gear position” would be disastrous if it is not what was intended. In our spiritual journey, there is a similar indicator too. Are we continued to grow (in the Drive (D))? Or, are we at the stagnant (in the Park (P)) position? The worst possible position that we can be is at the Reverse (R) position. How do we know that we are at that position? The Prophet Hosea indicated to us that a sign of “Reverse” in our spiritual journey is similar to this: “His hair is sprinkled with gray, but he does not notice. 頭髮斑白，他也不覺得‧(Hosea 7:9b)”. It implies that we lost our interest in God’s house just like our hair sprinkled with gray, but didn’t notice it. This symptom starts from we lost interests in God’s word and in prayer, then lost respect of our Lord Jesus Christ and finally we become insensitive to sins.

Secondly, well preparation is always a thing that we tend to neglect. Sometimes, I quickly jump into something which is not thoughtfully prepared. This may result in failure or possible humiliation. The other time, however, I may envy someone’s success without knowing that there is a price of numerous painful efforts or humiliating failures behind. As the saying goes, “No pains, no gains”.  I need to spend my efforts to learn in order to succeed.  Analogously, in our spiritual journey, if we do not put our efforts in cultivating our relationship with God, we may not be able to escape from the snares of temptation coming from the evil one.

My dear brothers and sisters, “Happy New Year”!  “Do you have a New Year Resolution already?” “Are you starting to execute it yet?” As the yearly theme of our church is “Lives affecting lives”, can we affect others positively without being affected negatively? Let’s be prepared to make a “new year resolution” by putting our efforts on reading God’s word daily because His word is our life!

『我若不信在活人之地得見耶和華的恩惠，就早已喪膽了』

I remain confident of this: I will see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living. (Psalm 27:13)

————————————————————————————————————————

As the year of 2011 is quickly approaching the end, I’d like to take this opportunity to share with you my family’s journey in the year. We are grateful to have you as our friends, brothers or sisters to accompany and to encourage my family during our good times and our bad times. Most importantly, we are indebted to our gracious Lord for His provision and protection in 2011.

Year 2011 was quite a challenging year for my family – Our decision to attend a newly established church HoCL and our daughter had her milestone as a college freshman, are key highlights to my family. The decision of leaving a church which we had attended for 10+ years has never been easy on us. We were hesitated initially, of course, because we have to leave our comfort zone. Especially our kids need to separate from their friends at youth group. Before we started this new journey, several families of God got together to pray for the decision regularly.  To be sure, I even asked three things from our Lord to confirm the decision. These three things were answered timely. When January came, we celebrated the new birth of our HoCL church with a grateful heart. As I look back to this boldness move, I can only say it is full of God’s goodness and grace.

The transition of my daughter from high school to college marks the beginning of our empty nesting. To us, this might be just a small step, but to her it would be a giant leap. We asked from our Lord to guide her and to provide her a good spiritual environment in order to nourish her. As the Fall semester ends, we were glad to see her back home “survived”, We thank God for His protection. We understand that not for long, my other two kids would be leaving home too. At that time, we may worry even more but we know God will be their guide if they could follow Him closely. The mixed feeling of parenthood reminds me of God’s love recorded in the book of Isaiah.

“In all their distress he too was distressed, and the angel of his presence saved them. In his love and mercy he redeemed them; he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old. 他們在一切苦難中、他也同受苦難．並且他面前的使者拯救他們．他以慈愛和憐憫救贖他們．在古時的日子、常保抱他們、懷搋他們。(Isaiah以賽亞書 63:9)”

From Israelites’ experience, we can be sure that God is always with us even we are distressed and He lifts us up because He is Emmanuel. What a gracious God we have!

In the middle of this year, we were also experienced the fear of resurrection of my wife’s illness. By God’s grace, we discovered it was not the case after doctor’s extensive examination. Once again we experienced God’s protection in my family. From this experience we can slightly understand the feel of king David’s psalm, “Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.我雖然行過死蔭的幽谷，也不怕遭害‧因為你與我同在‧你的杖，你的竿，都安慰我‧(Psalm 23:4)”

In this Christmas season, let’s remember that He showed us His love by giving us His only son Jesus Christ. Apostle Paul taught us that it is God who seeks us instead of us seek Him:

“But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship. 及至時候滿足，神就差遣他的兒子，為女子所生，且生在律法以下，要把律法以下的人贖出來，叫我們得著兒子的名分‧(加拉太書 4:4-5)”

My dear friends, brothers and sisters, I am confident that we will see God’s goodness and grace in the years to come if we continue to follow Him day by day, closely. Let me use this opportunity to say,

May you have a joyful and peaceful Christmas and New Year!

May our Lord be with you and your family, as always!