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As Christmas time is closing in, the schools are also wrapping up their semesters. Last Wednesday, we spent 8+ hours on the road to bring our daughter back from her college for winter break. Even with the good weather condition, my wife and I still felt the driving is physically challenging – ah…what can I say, we are not young anymore. After the trip, I was thinking, “It would be great if we can have a transporter machine same as the one in the “Star Trek” – it would “beam” up us from one location to another location almost instantly.” I realize that this may be just a fantasy but who knows, it could become a reality someday in the future, if our Lord is permitting 🙂

Talking about the location switching, I still remember a quote “You’re the wrong guy in the wrong place at the wrong time.” from the movie “Die Hard 2”. Though it was intended to be sarcastic in the movie but it bears some insights to our life – wrong timing to show up in a location is already a bad move not even mention at wrong location. That is where all the accidents or awkward things we encounter. I could imagine no one wants to be in that shoe. But how many people know whether they are in the wrong location or not? This is a thought that I’d like to share with you this week.

Most of us know that besides affordability, “location” probably is the single most crucial factor if you ever want to buy or sell a real estate or to find a desired school district for your kids. No wonder someone used to say, “The three most important things about buying and selling property are location, location, location!”

How about “location” of one’s spirituality? Is there a right location or wrong location too? Yes, certainly. Apostle Paul indicated to us that our spiritual location before we received Jesus as our personal savior was: “we were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world  你們與基督無關 ，在以色列國民以外 ，在所應許的諸約上是局外人 ，並且活在世上沒有指望 ，沒有神 (Ephesians 2:12)”. By God’s grace, we were justified before Him as “He has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves 他救了我們脫離黑暗的權勢，把我們遷到他愛子的國裡 (Colossians 1:13)”. “遷 (transfer, remove from one place to another)” is a powerful word implies that we were literally removed from dominion of darkness (wrong location) and transferred into the kingdom of the Son (right location). It is a switching of location instantaneously!

Therefore, my dear friends, brothers and sisters, do you know where is your spiritual location? Is it in the right location? If it is, are you heading the right direction toward Him? Please remember that every good and perfect gift is coming from Him, if we are in the right location. During this Christmas season, let’s once again remember the parable of true vine (John 15) – we need to remain in Him and then He will remain in us.

Last Wednesday, we had a free breakfast bonanza at my working place to celebrate the coming of “holidays”. Nowadays, corporations do not want to mention “Christmas” anymore.  The cafeteria was filled with people who took advantage of this free offer. While I was there, I overheard one of the cafeteria clerks said, “I have never seen so many people in the cafeteria this year”.  Yes, it was quite a scene to see so many people around. But this is just an exceptional case.

This lets me think of a drastically different scene from 2000 years ago. When God decided to give us the greatest “free” gift – His only begotten son Jesus Christ, what was mankind’s reaction? I know for sure He is not as welcomed as the free breakfast we just had. Isn’t this ironic? As we recall from the Scripture (Luke 2), Jesus was born in a manger at a small town called Bethlehem because there was no guest room for Him. And, there is neither a “welcome party” nor a “baby shower” being held later to celebrate His birth except shepherds in the field came to receive Him.

The sad part in our society is, 2000 years later, most of people celebrate holidays do not even know what is the reason for; because schools, corporations, public institutions and governments are not allowed to teach or to indicate the true meaning of celebration anymore. The celebration therefore becomes commercialized and has lost its meaning in the middle of shopping frenzy. Richard De Haan, President of RBC Ministries, wrote a very enlightening story about the phenomenon of trying to ignore the true meaning intentionally. He wrote,

Two women who were dressed in their finest were having lunch together in a very exclusive restaurant. A friend saw them and came over to their table to greet them. “What’s the special occasion?” she asked. One of the women said, “We’re having a birthday party for the baby in our family. He’s 2 years old today.” “But, where’s the baby?” the friend asked. The child’s mother answered, “Oh, I dropped him off at my mother’s house. She’s taking care of him until the party’s over. It wouldn’t have been any fun with him along.”

Isn’t this very ridiculous to celebrate a birthday without the birthday baby?  As this phenomenon has become more and more acceptable today because of the consideration and tolerance against others that we were asked to do, the recognition and acknowledgement of the true meaning of celebration would become more and more blurry in our minds. There is a serious warning, however, in the book of 1 John that we should remember:

No one who denies the Son has the Father; whoever acknowledges the Son has the Father also. 凡不認子的就沒有父．認子的連父也有了。(1 John 2:23)

May God help this country to recognize the true meaning of Christmas and may our Lord be exalted by all nations!

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Last Tuesday when I entered my workplace, I ran into one of my colleagues.

He burst out one phrase, “It is all your fault!”

“Sure” I smiled and responded. I know he was joking and we laughed after I responded. This is a kind of typical and funny greeting to start a day around here.

Seriously though, if you think it a little bit further; no one is perfect and as a result finding a fault from a person is relatively easy. Just open newspaper or internet, you can quickly glimpse through those flying scud missiles among Presidential candidates’ character, for example. But, how many of them would admit their faults? Probably very few, right? That’s reason we call it politics. Ironically, we seem to accept that politics is a way of life in our government. The chilling fact is this phenomenon is not a singular case. You can see it almost everywhere.  For those who are working under a corporation environment, you probably would understand what I was talking about.

To admit making mistakes is seldom a human nature, as we all know. I myself used to be a man of unwilling to admit mistakes I made. I find that this is rooted from my “pride”.  The consequence is it constantly causes me grief and troubles. As years went by, I ask our Lord to help me learn my lessons. Though I am making progress, there are still a lot of rooms left to be desired. I view this is an essential “molding process” that our Lord devised for us as apostle Paul indicated to us, “For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. 因為他預先所知道的人 ，就預先定下效法他兒子的模樣 ，使他兒子在許多弟兄中作長子” (Romans 8:29)

Talking about finding fault with others, there is another spectrum that, I think, is important to us. Sometimes, our pride would mistake us that we are “somebody” – thinking that we have the right to judge others. This is a dangerous thought because only our Lord has the authority in judging. This is why our Lord Jesus taught us that, “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 為什麼看見你弟兄眼中有刺，卻不想自己眼中有梁木呢” (Luke 6:41).

Dwight L Moody used to say, “Moses spent forty years in the king’s palace thinking that he was somebody; then he lived forty years in the wilderness finding out that without God he was a nobody; finally he spent forty more years discovering how a nobody with God can be a somebody” Therefore, my brothers and sisters, finding faults with others can only be helpful in edifying him / her when we are speaking truth in love, not in our prideful mind.

May our Lord grant us wisdom to differentiate what can be changed and what can’t be changed!

Each year, Thanksgiving Day is always a great time for my family to get together with friends and families to reflect on the blessings we received from God. During this year, we are so grateful that we can have another chance to serve Him joyfully in various capacities.

The Thanksgiving Day is also a marking of the start of Christmas shopping season, especially the day after Thanksgiving which is normally called “Black Friday”. There are a lot of door buster sales for you to pick and choose. Hope you got what you are looking for from your “wish list”.  Sometimes, I was wondering “Do I really need those extra stuffs lying around my house?” It seems to me discontentment is more of a cause for the shopping spree than is a necessity.

There has an old saying, “Looking for a horse while riding on a donkey (騎驢找馬)”. It is usually implying in searching for a better one while retaining the current one. However, it is also implicating an unsettled mind set against currently possessed resource or position. It may not be wrong if you could find a right balance in between your “aspiration” and “contentment”. But I find it is a difficult thing to control the “little fox” in our mind – The more we desire, the more we were aspired to get. “When to stop” is the most difficult thing to practice. No wonder the Bible teaches us to pursue the “self control” fruit of the Holy Spirit (Galatians 5:22).

So, what is your wish list during this season, my dear brothers and sisters? Do you wish to become a thankful person?  How about wishing to develop a better and closer relationship with our God?  After all, we received all the blessings from Him. May we all remember that every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights (James 1:17a).

Hence, to be thankful is to acknowledge His provision and mercies. The author of the book of Proverbs taught us that, “in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight. 在你一切所行的事上，都要認定他，他必指引你的路‧ (Proverbs 3:6)”

May God bless you and your family during this holiday seasons.

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Last Sunday, I was asked by my wife to buy bottles of milk from supermarket. So, I stopped by a local ShopRite supermarket to get two of them. Nowadays, supermarket is providing self checkout lanes just like gas stations aimed to reduce labor expense. At one of the self checkout lanes, I swiped my supermarket card to let the scanning machine recognize me first before I scan my milk. Immediately, the machine threw me an error message and asked me to find a salesperson for help. I thought it was either the machine does not like me :-), or my swiping was not done properly. Consequently, I reset the machine and restarted the process again. This time I carefully swiped my supermarket card and guess what, the same error message came up again. My mind told me that “Hey, dummy, just follow the advice!” Hence, I strolled to a counter and asked a salesperson to help me clear the message.

After the salesperson came and cleared the message, I re-swipe my card…… the same annoying message showed up again! I was about to blow up my patience; I looked at the salesperson and asked, “Why my card is not recognized?” The salesperson looked at me “sternly” and said, “This is ShopRite, not Stop & Shop!” I suddenly realized that I was using a “wrong” (Stop & Shop) supermarket card. Boy! I was embarrassed. 🙁 On my way out, I blamed my old age again for this embarrassing experience. As I think it over, I find the experience is interesting and it gives me a perspective that might be interested to you also.

Sometimes, we may “quickly” judge something or someone without looking into ourselves first. This usually could generate embarrassing / awkward situations. You can call it a human weakness – finger pointing outward is easier than pointing inward, even we know that “three fingers inward” and “two fingers outward” are normal pointing style. The book of James teaches us that:

My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires. 我親愛的弟兄們，這是你們所知道的‧但你們各人要快快的聽，慢慢的說，慢慢的動怒‧因為人的怒氣，並不成就 神的義‧(James 2:19-20)

Then, the machine was doing its job in filtering out wrong input from me. There is no back-off or compromise likes human usually would. Of course, you can argue that it is machine and is inhuman 🙂 As Christians, it is very important for us to function properly like the machine did – to discern good from evil messages from this world. It requires us to read God’s words diligently in order to become a mature person eating solid food, just like the author from the book of Hebrews said,

Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil. 凡 只 能 吃 奶 的 都 不 熟 練 仁 義 的 道 理 ， 因 為 他 是 嬰 孩 ；惟 獨 長 大 成 人 的 才 能 吃 乾 糧 ； 他 們 的 心 竅 習 練 得 通 達 ， 就 能 分 辨 好 歹 了 。(Hebrews 5:13-14)

Lastly, using the right card is crucial to be recognized by the machine. It is similar to realize that the right “Way” is crucial to our salvation as Jesus said,

“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” 耶穌說，我就是道路，真理，生命‧若不藉著我‧沒有人能到父那裡去‧ (John 14:6)

My dear brothers and sisters, we used to be like the main character, “Graceless”, in the “The Pilgrim’s Progress天路歷程” by John Bunyan. Because of God’s grace, we become “Christian”.  Let’s remember His grace and count His blessings. There is no greater gift than His son, Jesus Christ.

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Recently, my wife started to favor the Kimchi fried rice. So, she experimented several times at home and of course, my kids and I have no choice but become guinea pigs. 🙂 To be honest, it is not too bad and my kids love it. My wife usually likes to venture new things and new / wild ideas, some of you may have already known it. To me, I used to think the fried rice is kind of “cold rice reutilization” – no wonder some people called it “cooking cold rice (炒冷飯)” because it is usually done on “left over” rice and seldom people would do it on the newly cooked rice. Besides, cooking cold rice would sometimes imply “there is nothing new” analogously.

This lets me think of a conversation at my working place:

“So, what’s your point?” one of my colleagues asked. “My point is we don’t need to re-invent the wheel, we can build upon what we have.” My other colleague answered.

This is a scene in one of our meetings at work. Normally, to reinvent the wheel is meant to duplicate a basic method that has already been created or proven by others previously. Cooking cold rice would be similar to reinventing the wheel if we look at from “there is nothing new” perspective. But it could mean differently if we look from “the wheel” perspective. Fried rice needs to have “rice” as a base and the other ingredients are just add-on. Similarly, the wheel is the originally proven method and it is the base for other things to build upon.

Now let me point you to another perspective, if I may – what is the “rice” or “wheel” in our belief? Based on Apostle Paul’s teaching to the church of Corinth,

For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. 因為那已經立好的根基，就是耶穌基督，此外沒有人能立別的根基‧(1 Corinthians 3:11)

Therefore, it is clear to us the foundation of our belief is “Jesus Christ”.  Then, the next question would be “what kind of “fried rice” you are cooking?” Because it is ultimately important as Paul indicated:

If any man builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, 13 his work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man’s work. If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward. 若有人用金，銀，寶石，草木，禾楷，在這根基上建造‧各人的工程必然顯露‧因為那日子要將他表明出來，有火發現‧這火要試驗各人的工程怎樣‧人在那根基上所建造的工程，若存得住，他就要得賞賜‧(1 Corinthians 3:12-14)

Last Friday, we were studying the 2 Timothy 4, Paul confidently declared that:

I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.  Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing. 那美好的仗我已經打過了‧當跑的路我已經跑盡了‧所信的道我已經守住了‧從此以後，有公義的冠冕為我存留，就是按著公義審判的主到了那日要賜給我的‧不但賜給我，也賜給凡愛慕他顯現的人‧(2 Timothy 4:7-8)

Do we have the same confidence that he had? Can we become a tasty Kimchi Fried Rice in the future? This is a question worth to ask ourselves, my dear brothers and sisters….

In England, there is a psychiatric center. They use a simple method to determine whether a patient has been cured by the treatments or not. They bring the patient to a pot of water under a running water faucet. Then, they ask the patient to scoop out the water in the pot, ladle by ladle. The patient is considered to be cured – in his or her right mind – if he or she turns off the running water faucet first before starting to scoop out water. Otherwise, the patient is considered to remain out of his / her mind if he or she proceeds to scoop out the water without turning off the water faucet.

The story gives us an illustration of how to detect behavior from an “out of one’s mind” person after his treatments. Analogously, it can be used to detect Christian’s true repentance too. This let me think of a Bible verse from the epistle of 2 Corinthians that Apostle Paul addressed to the church at Corinth.

If we are “out of our mind,” as some say, it is for God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you. (2 Corinthians 5:13) 我們若果顛狂，是為神‧若果謹守，是為你們‧

The zealous behavior of Apostle Paul and his co-workers in preaching the Gospel signifies their fervent love to God. It was, however, mistakenly viewed as “out of their mind” by some people in the Corinth. Hence, Paul said “If for you (the Corinthians), we will keep our right mind” to avoid misunderstanding.  So, let me post a question here, if I may. From your recollection of your love /courting experience, were you always calm and normal? Have you ever done something that is out of ordinary might be qualified as “out of your mind”? Very likely, right? You yourself may not realize that until someone points it out. May be some day we can share a little bit more among ourselves. 🙂 Based on our own experience, we can infer that the more we love someone, the more we want to do something for (focus on) him / her. This is somewhat similar to apostle Paul’s passion for God.

From another case, in the Gospel of Mark, we see that Jesus was accused by his family that he is “out of his mind” (Mark 3:20-21) because he was too busy to eat but serving the crowd. While outside representation of Jesus’ behavior may confuse His family but it tells us how much He cares about His people and ultimately, mankind. With His passion, He gave His life to us. This is one of the reasons that Paul and his co-workers were so “out of their mind”.  It should be one of our reasons to live for Him too. The other reason we should have the same enthusiasm as Paul and his co-workers is we are the new creation, as Paul indicated, and we were forgiven and redeemed.

“…..if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! 若有人在基督裡，他就是新造的人‧舊事已過，都變成新的了‧(2 Corinthians 5:17)”

Therefore, my brothers and sisters, let’s live a zealous life that is worthy of our grace. Because in Christ, we received our salvation; we became a new creation (a Christian), we have a new status (heir of His kingdom), we have promised blessings (inheritances), we have a new living style (sanctification), and we have His abundant love. The degree of our “out of our mind” for Him would indicate how much we love Him. May we have the same zeal as apostle Paul and his co-workers!