Can't wait...

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The angel showed me a river filled with the water of life, as clear as crystal. It was flowing from the throne of God and the lamb. Between the street of the city and the river there was a tree of life visible from both sides. It produced 12 kinds of fruit. Each month had its own fruit. The leaves of the tree will heal the nations. There will no longer be any curse. The throne of God and the lamb will be in the city. His servants will worship him and see his face. His name will be on their foreheads. There will be no more night, and they will not need any light from lamps or the sun because the Lord God will shine on them. They will rule as kings forever and ever.
(Revelation 22:1-5)

More than Conquerors

The Word of God declares that our lives are hidden in Christ.  Jesus said that if a man desires to find his life in this world he should pursue losing it.  One way of looking at what Jesus said is that he is telling us that if we lose our life, for His sake, then we will really find it.
It is interesting that our world is filled with the spirit of 'finding oneself' by looking inward.  The desire to want to find one's purpose, one's meaning in life, is not bad in and of itself.  It is the means by which we seek to find out this understanding that is troubling.  While the world says look inside oneself, Jesus says look outside of ourselves.  Specifically, in Colossians 3:3 the life we seek - our true lives - is found hidden IN Christ.  Notice that even though it is hidden, the bible tells us where it is: in Christ. 
It follows that this is in line with the bible's encouragement to seek God, His face and His person.  As Christians, the life we seek is found in Christ.  Thus it behooves us to seek Him.  For in doing so not only will we find Him, but we will find ourselves as well. 
Keep your minds fixed on things there, not on things here on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
(Colossians 3:2-3 GNB)
Col 3:2=3  あなたがたは、地上のものを思わず、天にあるものを思いなさい。 あなたがたはすでに死んでおり、あなたがたのいのちは、キリストとともに、神のうちに隠されてあるからです。
For in Him we live and move and have our being, as also certain of your own poets have said, For we are also His offspring.
(Acts 17:28 MKJV)
そのように私たちは神の子孫ですから、神を、人間の技術や工夫で造った金や銀や石などの像と同じものと考えてはいけません。
(Acts 17:29 JSS)

I've Come Too Far

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I have come too far. I have come too far. I've come too far to turn around, a higher plain Ive found. This I know: I'm gonna make it, I cant turn back now.

Though the storms may rise, though winds may blow! I know the Lord is by my side, to comfort and to guide. This I know: I'm gonna make it, I cant turn back now.

Forgetting those things which are behind me. I'm reaching to those things which are before me. Oh I press towards the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Jesus Christ!!

-Richard Smallwood

Think different....Hear different...Be different.

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LESSON
Sensei: "...TAA ta TAA ta TAA..." but in jazz, it's the opposite. "Doo TA doo TA doo TA..." Just follow that beat, you can jazz up anything. Try it.

Students play...unfortunately.

Sensei: No, no. All wrong!

STREET
Student 1: What are you doing?

Student 2: Is this jazz?
Student 3: Are you nuts?
Student 4: No, it's not.

Old school clapping vs. New school revelation ensues...

Students: Wow! It sure is jazz now. SWING!

oy: Mom, who are they?
Mom: Don't look.

STORE FRONT:
Mother: So this is jazz...
Grandma: Just like street hawkers.

The innocence - and truth - of children

I don't know why, but feel like posting up tons of pictures of my students and other kids I knew while living in Japan:

A purikura picture of some of my former Japanese students during my first year living and working in Japan. Not primary, but cool nonetheless...yossha!

A picture I took of my nursery school children in Japan.  Yes, they always looked like this because they always had this energy...it is not lens blur...haha.

 

Some of my co-taiko players back in the day.  Those kids could rock those drums!

As a primary school teacher I have the blessed opportunity to learn, remember, be refreshed, and enlightened each day by these bundles of conviction (at least they convict me by reminding that Jesus said of such is the kingdom of God) called children.

1. One day, 3 primary one girls seemed bored being in the jungle gym.  There were other kids running around, going crazy as if there was no tomorrow.  These 3 girls, however, were standing in a circle right in front of me deciding how to overcome their boredom.  "This is boring, what should we do?"  "I don't know, what do you want to do?"  Silence ensues for about 25 seconds.  Suddenly, one of the girls shouts, "Look, it's a hairy monster...RUN!"  Screaming at the top of their lungs, the girls found their escape from the prison of boredom. This monster apparently chased them for the next 10 minutes or so because I never saw them bored for the rest of that recess period.  I might try that the next time I'm on the Singaporean MRT system at about 7am during a workday. 

LESSON LEARNED:  God gave us an imagination.  I should use it.  Bah-humbug to adults and 'mature' people who scoff at seemingly immature rantings or actions of others.  hey, I like to watch cartoons...especially silly ones.  What? Inappropriate or really strange behavior for someone like me? Well, that's ok...you can think that and use up energy while I watch the newest episode of Animal Yokocho and laugh my head off...  :-)

2. Today, we were studying patterns in numerals and geometric shapes.  After doing a class wide instruction, the students were busy working out their individual questions, trying to solve pattern problems in their packet.  One girl was having trouble with a few so I went over to help her with a geometric pattern problem.  I asked, "What part of this pattern is giving you trouble?"  "I don't know," she said.  So I replied, as any good teacher would, "Ok...look at it closely."  She, as any good student would, widened her eyes, leaned in very close, and proceeded to stare at her worksheet...about 2 centimeters from her paper.  I'm glad she didn't see my face...I was about to explode with laughter.

LESSON LEARNED:  I could learn a lot from kids regarding obedience.  When God says, "Look at this" I should do like my girl.  When God says go, I should go.  Stop, then I'll stop.  I wonder if God gets a kick out of us sometimes.  I love my kids...they keep me young.

3.  Sometimes my students do bad things.  Like swearing, or hitting other students, or just being mean to each other.  When I deal with them I always ask, somewhere in the interaction, "...WHY did you do it?"  The answer is usually always the same: "I don't know."  Inside I weep because I know they really don't know why they do mean things.  Who does?  A prophet in the bible once said, "The heart is desperately wicked.  Who can know it?" It's the same with adults, teenagers, anyone really.  We don't wake up in the morning saying, "Ok, how can I be bad today?!?"  We just act...and, more than nought, in a way we aren't too happy about.  Like a child, I find myself saying, "Now WHY did I do that?  I don't know."  But I do know....my fallen heart, carnal nature, old man that sometimes rises up and gets the best of me. 

LESSON LEARNED: Kids have the same problems that non-kids do.  And it is just as serious for them as it is for us.  It's not about rules, and a government or society...no matter how moral or civil it is...cannot change our hearts. We all need Jesus. He is the only one that can make an old man a new man.  An old kid a new kid.  A bad student a good student. Period.

I SURRENDER

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Anything you want Lord, you got it.  

I SURRENDER! I SURRENDER!

I tired fighting You, I tired I tired its true.  I tired fighting you, I tired I tired its true.

Your love win me over, Your love take me over. Cause your love set me on fireYour love take me higher.

Anything you want Lord, you got it.  

I SURRENDER! I SURRENDER!

Show me the way, so I kneel and pray.  You teach me how to understand how to be a righteous man

But inside of me there is a battle going on, inside of me there is struggle.  But this fight is over, to You I surrender.  This fight is over, so come and take controlrule my world!

Anything you want Lord, you got it.  

I SURRENDER! I SURRENDER

 -Isaac Blackman 

"....."

I have oft regretted my speech.... ...never my silence.

Why Morning Prayer?

The act of prayer teaches us our unworthiness, which is a very salutary lesson for such proud beings as we are. If God gave us favours without constraining us to pray for them we should never know how poor we are, but a true prayer is an inventory of wants, a catalogue of necessities, a revelation of hidden poverty. While it is an application to divine wealth, it is a confession of human emptiness. The most healthy state of a Christian is to be always empty in self and constantly depending upon the Lord for supplies; to be always poor in self and rich in Jesus; weak as water personally, but mighty through God to do great exploits; and hence the use of prayer, because, while it adores God, it lays the creature where it should be, in the very dust. Prayer is in itself, apart from the answer which it brings, a great benefit to the Christian. As the runner gains strength for the race by daily exercise, so for the great race of life we acquire energy by the hallowed labour of prayer. Prayer plumes the wings of God's young eaglets, that they may learn to mount above the clouds. Prayer girds the loins of God's warriors, and sends them forth to combat with their sinews braced and their muscles firm. An earnest pleader cometh out of his closet, even as the sun ariseth from the chambers of the east, rejoicing like a strong man to run his race. Prayer is that uplifted hand of Moses which routs the Amalekites more than the sword of Joshua; it is the arrow shot from the chamber of the prophet foreboding defeat to the Syrians. Prayer girds human weakness with divine strength, turns human folly into heavenly wisdom, and gives to troubled mortals the peace of God. We know not what prayer cannot do! We thank thee, great God, for the mercy-seat, a choice proof of thy marvellous lovingkindness. Help us to use it aright throughout this day! -Spurgeon's Daily Devotional

"Now, many overwhelmed I have. Cannot everything understand...how to do?"

Most of us know what it is to be overwhelmed in heart; emptied as when a man wipeth a dish and turneth it upside down; submerged and thrown on our beam ends like a vessel mastered by the storm. Discoveries of inward corruption will do this, if the Lord permits the great deep of our depravity to become troubled and cast up mire and dirt. Disappointments and heart-breaks will do this when billow after billow rolls over us, and we are like a broken shell hurled to and fro by the surf. Blessed be God, at such seasons we are not without an all-sufficient solace, our God is the harbour of weather-beaten sails, the hospice of forlorn pilgrims. Higher than we are is He, His mercy higher than our sins, His love higher than our thoughts. It is pitiful to see men putting their trust in something lower than themselves; but our confidence is fixed upon an exceeding high and glorious Lord. A Rock He is since He changes not, and a high Rock, because the tempests which overwhelm us roll far beneath at His feet; He is not disturbed by them, but rules them at His will. If we get under the shelter of this lofty Rock we may defy the hurricane; all is calm under the lee of that towering cliff. Alas! such is the confusion in which the troubled mind is often cast, that we need piloting to this divine shelter. Hence the prayer of the text. O Lord, our God, by Thy Holy Spirit, teach us the way of faith, lead us into Thy rest. The wind blows us out to sea, the helm answers not to our puny hand; Thou, Thou alone canst steer us over the bar between yon sunken rocks, safe into the fair haven. How dependent we are upon Thee--we need Thee to bring us to Thee. To be wisely directed and steered into safety and peace is Thy gift, and Thine alone. This night be pleased to deal well with Thy servants. -Spurgeon

I needed this reminder...thanks Remy...

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Don't you know sitting on a talent is an awful crime,
so I thank the mighty Father that He gave me mine.

And I kept improving in on the down and low,
taking every opportunity to learn and grow.

So oh no no no, oh no no no,
never sit around and let your talent waste away just so...(x2)

So if you forget these all of de lyrics or melodies that the Rembunction sang or said,
I really hope that the lyrics of this refrain remain in your head.

IT'S STARTS NOW!

Jesus Calms the Storm...Japanese Style.

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And I got 160 more where those MP3s came from.  I love the old school style! 

More importantly, I love how Jesus still loves Japan and the Japanese...

Iesu-sama, Nihon o ai shiteiru ne.  Dareka Nihon ni okute kudasai.  Boku ga iku koto ga dekiru...itsudemo, dokodemo....ne.

 Nihon o wasurenaide kudasaimasen ka?  Onegaitashimasu....

The blaze of the risen 'sun' encourages me to go onward...

"God"

Let us construct a fable. Let us picture a woman thrown into a dungeon. There she bears and rears a son. He grows up seeing nothing but the dungeon walls, the straw on the floor, and a little patch of the sky seen through the grating, which is too high up to show anything except sky. This unfortunate woman was an artist, and when they imprisoned her she managed to bring with her a drawing pad and a box of pencils. As she never loses the hope of deliverance she is constantly teaching her son about that outer world which he has never seen. She does it very largely by drawing him pictures. With her pencil she attempts to show him what fields, rivers, mountains, cities, and waves on a beach are like. He is a dutiful boy and he does his best to believe her when she tells him that that outer world is far more interesting and glorious than anything in the dungeon. At times he succeeds. On the whole he gets on tolerably well until, one day, he says something that gives his mother pause. For a minute or two they are at cross-purposes. Finally it dawns on her that he has, all these years, lived under a misconception. ‘But,’ she gasps, ‘you didn’t think that the real world was full of lines drawn in lead pencil?’ ‘What?’ says the boy. ‘ No pencil-marks there?’ And instantly his whole notion of the outer world becomes a blank. For the lines, by which alone he was imagining it, have now been denied of it. He has no idea of that which will exclude and dispense with the lines, that of which the lines were merely a transposition – the waving tree-tops, the light dancing on the weir, the coloured three-dimensional realities which are not enclosed in lines but define their own shapes at every moment with a delicacy and multiplicity which no drawing could ever achieve. This child will get the idea that the real world is somehow less visible than his mother’s pictures. In reality it lacks lines because it is incomparably more visible.

So with us.

‘We know not what we shall be’; but we may be sure we shall be more, not less, than we were on earth. Our natural experiences (sensory, emotional, imaginative) are only like the drawing, like penciled lines on flat paper. If they vanish in the risen life, they will vanish only as pencil lines vanish from the real landscape; not as a candle flame that is put out but as a candle flame which becomes invisible because someone has pulled up the blind, thrown open the shutters, and let in the blaze of the risen sun.

-C.S. Lewis, Transposition

dude, I like how this man thinks....

Try this...

It was my first day of teaching today...

Today was my first day of teaching. I am very tired. I must do better for my students. I must change myself to make them successful. I must be diligent to keep the rules and standards for everyone strong. I must alter my speech and mindset for each child. I must have tough love for all of them. I must adapt each lesson and my style to compensate for the nationalities (Korean, Chinese, Taiwanese, Singaporean) in my classroom. I must be swift and clear when talking to some children (who have about 5% English ability) and intelligent and complex to the others (who are native speakers of English). I must go to bed and stop thinking of what I didn't do correct today. I must accommodate the child who looks at me with eyes that say, "Ehh?...Even though you are speaking slowly, clearly, and with kindergarten style words I don't understand a word that is coming out of your mouth so I'm going to just shut your voice out of my head." and the child with eyes who says, "WHAT? You are speaking to us like we are in 1st grade with that type of English. Come on, teach!" I must be consistent with telling them to stop whining, to sit down, to listen first before they throw up there hands and say, "Teacher, huh?...(because they cannot understand English). I must challenge myself to learn new techniques in the next 10 hours (7 of which I hope to be sleeping, but probably not because I wish I had done better for my kids today). I must print out one student's name again on my printer because her passport name is not the one she wants to use. I must try to make many people understand that when I say, "Sorry I can't make it/Sorry, I have to go because I'M BUSY." that I really mean, "I'M BUSY." (One thing is for sure, i've learned that when people ask you to come over, go out to eat, or whatever and you say you're busy...for some reason...they cannot seem to believe it and try very hard to give YOU many reasons why you are not busy and why you should do what they say. Kinda like when someone asks, "Are you busy now?" and you say, "Yes." it is almost as if they have taken you to say, "I don't have time for whatever you're going to ask me." Shame...one really does get busy at times. I, for one, tend to believe people whatever they say. If they are lying, it's their own blood on their own heads...not mine. But I digress...)

Today was my first day of teaching. I am very tired...

Quotes of the moment

Hello Singapore! :-)

I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work, I want to achieve immortality through not dying. –Woody Allen

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. –Mahatma Gandhi

Well timed silence hath more eloquence than speech. – Martin Franquhar Tupper

We didn’t lose the game, we just ran out of time. – Vince Lombardi

Blessed is the man, who having nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact. – George Eliot

The language of friendship is not words but meanings. –Thoreau

Protest long enough that you are right, and you will be wrong. –Yiddish Proverb

His soul will never starve for exploits or excitements who is wise enough to be made a fool of. To be “taken in” everywhere is to see the inside to everything. –Chesterton

People can be divided into three groups:

1. Those who make things happen.

2. Those who watch things happen.

3. Those that wonder what happened.

Are you involved or committed?

The difference between involvement and commitment is like eggs-and-ham breakfast: the chicken was involved, the pig was committed.

Trust = Just Do It

...taken while on duty for Zero Hour 2007...
~beauty is always around...just gotta keep looking for it~

"When you are asked for trust you may give it or withhold it; it is senseless to say that you will trust if you are given demonstrative certainty. There would be no room for trust if demonstration were given. When demonstration is given what will be left will be simply the sort of relation which results from having trusted, or not having trusted, before it was given."
-C.S. Lewis, On Obstinacy In Belief

The world/our hearts: "Prove it, then I'll trust you." (the 'it' being what we think we want)
God: "Trust Me, then I'll prove it." (the 'it' being what He knows is best for us)

Communication is key...especially about death.

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A random picture...a random prank call. hahahaha

NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER STOP

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somtimes in life things get so hard you feel like giving up. oh yea...
but remember God love you and He will never forsake you. oh yea...

He will always be our friend, right until the very end, so...

KEEP TRYING!  NEVER STOP.
NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER STOP yea...

KEEP TRYING!  NEVER STOP.
NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER STOP yea...

-Eldon Blackman 

the last song I'd sing, if today were my last day to live...

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My God, my God you are so good to me,
and even though I'm not worthy you still deliver me.

From the hand of the oppressor and my enemies,
Like a father to a son, you always take care of me.
My light in the darkness, my joy when there's sadness,
My sense of direction, in this time of confusion.

You are the protector of my life, and your mercies endureth forever,
You are the protector of my life, and your mercies endureth forever...and ever...forever....

Kevon Thomas, Protector