Finding them loveable

For those who don't know my work, I'm a Pharmacist but I'm currently working in a completely different role as a User Acceptance Test Manager (UAT) -- people who work in Project Management would know all about UAT. This role involves creating tests for software, coordinating the running of those tests, logging the problems and making sure the fixes get done in the given timelines . 


I'm still new to this role, and I have some great support from experienced people who seem to have a lot of faith in my ability to do something I'd never done before! I'm totally loving it and am very thankful for this opportunity. I never thought I'd get into something so geeky, and so totally outside of Pharmacy.


My role also involves some management. I have people in my team whose background is more clinical than technical; and before they ever got into this project, most had minimal computer literacy skills. I've learned to look at each individual's skill-set and direct them to work that would best benefit them AND the team. 


For example, I had one team member who was great at looking at the details and telling you what should be considered - but there's no way now that I'd ever give him test scripts to write (from painful experience). It's just not worth it! Instead, he helps me test the tests, and check for problems. He's ace at that. He's my best defect-finder because he's anal about detail.  


Because he is quite a few years my senior, it took him some time to get used to taking instructions from me. I was driven to exasperation, and got into some unpleasant conversations with him in the beginning until I worked out what his strengths and weaknesses were. Now I believe we have mutual respect for each other. I'm so glad we can turn to God for His counsel! It never fails. It turns out he's a great joker, is vulnerable about his weaknesses, and is a devoted single parent who often feels overwhelmed with life. 


I have another colleague who had me learning patience as well. Her IT and memory skills are probably the lowest of all in the team, and was a source of anxiety when we did our first round of testing because I would literally be called to her desk every 5 minutes to help her out with something. She would get stuck on little details when I expected her to be able to assess it in the bigger scheme of things, put things in place to either fix it or get it discussed to be fixed, then move on. She might be able to do the first two things, but she had trouble moving on. Talking with her when you're in a hurry is an exercise in speech engineering to bring her back to the task at hand (think tangents - lots of them). Otherwise, she's great to chat with - she's always willing to sit with you and give you her full attention. But I wondered whether she would be of any help at all in the beginning!


Her best characteristics, however, are her persistence, and willingness to learn. She'd push on regardless of how long it took to finish, and she was always cared about what she was doing. She would make herself do something again and again in order to learn it properly. It turns out she's wonderful at pinpointing areas that require training precisely because she's had the same troubles herself. She'll be a great trainer in time to come.  
Lately, she's being challenged again in the area of test script writing. She'd done it before so I thought she'd be fine but it turns out I was wrong!


I volunteered to help her move on with her work as she was getting hung up on the details again.Yet, when I started talking to her, it quickly moved off into other realms of this project. As I stood looking at her today, wondering how I could bring her back from her tangent to the test script she needed to get fixed, then be able to finish it quickly (and doing it again and again and again), I found myself smiling at her tangents. And realised that she didn't exasperate me anymore.


Over the last few months, I've learned that she not only gets along great with girls, but is the kind of girl (well, she's in her 50s) that guys feel comfortable being blokey around. She loves it and can talk about the same subjects with them. Not all girls can do that - the rest of us get bored. She's had some tragedy in her life but she's become stronger because of it. She loves a great laugh and is always smiling. She loves to party, and especially luuuurves her wine and cheese. She also enjoys horseback riding and goes on motorbike road trips with her husband. Cool hey?


What am I going on about? Well, I've learned something from these two (especially).There are stories I could tell of other people who started off being annoying -- but it was these two who especially tested my patience. But as I came to understand them, I found that I could accommodate for their weaknesses more and more. I look at them now, and instead of wanting to pull my hair out, I smile and think to myself, 'there they go again'. And find them loveable.


I read one of Karen Cheng's blogticles (Karen has great tips for fashion shopping online btw) today for the date of 24 February and noticed how she wrote about her 23 month old son: "It’s kind of annoying, but at the same time very cute. And because he is my last baby, I can feel myself looking past all his peculiarities and going all lovey-dovey on him."


My Uncle really cemented it for me when he shared his own feelings of exasperation with team members in his church in Malaysia, and how, if he stops to look at them through God's love, finds them 'ke ai' ('cute' in mandarin). I hadn't thought of it that way before -- that you could deliberately choose to look at an annoying person through God's eyes and find something cute in them!


Now, I don't exactly go 'lovey-dovey' about my two colleagues but I do find myself looking past their peculiarities and appreciating them for who they are. Finding that they are precious, significant individuals - not just someone I happen to work with.


All this didn't come about by itself. It all started with a family friend who has some mild cognitive and memory impairment. It was because of her that I could do this with anyone at all. She lives in a home now because she'd be a risk to herself, although no one's told her that. I started off tolerating her constant repetitive conversations. She'd tell the same story a hundred times. She'd tell you that she's planning to do something one week, and by the next week, she's still talking about it as if it was a new thought. It's the same with her problems. It happens EVERY time I see her again. The same themes are always revisited -- her children, her goal to wake up early to pray, musing over whether or not to stay at the home or move out. And they hardly ever progress, though if they do, it is slow.


After tolerating it, I got sick of it. After getting sick of it, I prayed about it and a thought came to me: 'what if she was your grandmother?' That changed it for me. God began to talk to me about seeing treasure in people, then treasuring them. So I asked Him to help me see it with this family friend. Now I just smile and nod indulgently now when she tells me something I've heard thousands of times - she seems so excited over it that I have no heart to tell her so. And I just enjoy her bubbly happiness to just be with my family everytime I take her over for prayer meetings.


I've learned from her to pray using scripture. I knew about it before, but never really sought to integrate it into my prayers. She taught me by example, and by her passion for the unsaved.She's taught me a lot, really, without knowing it.


It's still not an automatic thing - there are always other people to test your patience. But I thought I'd share as it's been a special learning experience for me. Finding them loveable through the eyes of God -- there's definitely treasure to be discovered!

From one world to another

Today, Christchurch, New Zealand has experienced the devastating effects of an earthquake striking the heart of its CBD.


They were all having lunch in cafes, rushing to meet deadlines at their desks, serving customers at a counter, lining up to pay for their shopping, studying at their desks wishing the school bell would ring. Mothers were feeding their babies or putting them to sleep, some people were having a day off and putting their feet up. 


They were all just going through another normal day. But it was all changed in a horrifying one- minute quake that has reduced the city to chaos. For some, it would be the end of a long 'day ' on earth.

I often think of the testimony of Ian McCormack on his hospital bed, slowly dying from multiple box jellyfish stings. He said to himself, 'I'll take a quick nap, then I'll be stronger to fight this'. He woke up later, and the room was pitch black. He thought to himself, "who turned off the light?" and, "where is everyone?"
He got up and walked in one direction with his arms outstretched, aiming for a wall with a light switch. But there was nothing. 
'Maybe I've gone too far,' he thought, so he turned in the other direction. But still -- nothing. He felt fully alive. But he had not realized that he'd crossed that invisible line between the physical realm and the spiritual realm. He was dead. But death is only the beginning.


I don't know about you, but what happened today in Christchurch reminded me of the frailty of life; that 'today' is as tenuous as a puff of breath in the winter air. My thoughts and prayers are with them in this fearful, uncertain time. I hope great good comes of it all, despite the current chaos. But I can't help but be challenged right now to assess my own life, in light of its frailty. And yet, it's so hard to live like it's your last day when it seems that life will go on forever. 


And we're right -- in a way. According to the Bible, we will live forever - just not the way we are right now, and not in this realm either. 


... Also He has put eternity in their hearts...                                                    Ecclesiastes 3:11


We were made to live forever. But HOW we will live forever comes down to individual choice: in the arms of God, or in the steps of embittered demons who themselves have rejected God, and who have made torturing souls the whole purpose of their existence. Demons already know their punishment; the only thing they can do now is to take as many people as they can with them. That's their ultimate attack on God. 


The tragic lie of hell being a big party could not be further from the truth. All good things come from God - that includes pleasure, love and fun. Hell is as far from God as you can get. There, you can try all the naughty things that brought pleasure on earth and find with an eternal despair that there is no pleasure available there - because God is not there. The experience of hell is not called the second death for nothing. Please, choose Life! Jesus is the only way out of the slippery slope to that second death. And none of us know for sure how much time we really have left.


If you want to know more, I encourage you to check out http://www.allaboutgod.com/ and if you like, you could contact my church by email via the prayer request form at www.covenantchurch.org.au. We'd love to hear from you and help you answer your questions. We might not have all the answers, but we can tell you our own experiences, and the experiences of millions around the world who have found that this God is no myth, but alive, and better than you could have ever imagined.


But I digress.


Jesus warned that natural disasters, wars and civil unrest would become a prominent feature in the last days. If ever those things have become a prominent feature in a generation, it is ours. Just today, as a colleague counted off on his fingers the mysterious way all the wars, riots, earthquakes, floods and cyclones have coincided, he commented, "It makes you wonder what is happening." He's not the first I know of who has put it that way. We all sense something strange and significant in these happenings. The Bible has already told us what will happen...


Now as He sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to Him privately, saying, “Tell us, when will these things be? And what will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age?” 
And Jesus answered and said to them: “Take heed that no one deceives you. 


For many will come in My name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and will deceive many. And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not troubled; for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.


For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of sorrows.
“Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and kill you, and you will be hated by all nations for My name’s sake. And then many will be offended, will betray one another, and will hate one another. Then many false prophets will rise up and deceive many. 


And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold. But he who endures to the end shall be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come.

Matthew 24: 3-14

The good news is that the good guys win. Satan will be relegated to his appointed punishment in hell along with his minions, never to bother us again. Those who have chosen Life as God defines it will receive a majestic reward that lasts all eternity. The sad thing is that many who thought rejecting God was freedom will find that they were deceived.

If you're reading this now, you still have time to make the right choices. How will you choose to live - both now and in Eternity?

Significance

We all have our definitions about what significance means. I've found that mine has mostly been influenced by media.  

I used to think only fame meant that you were significant. I've since come to the conclusion that while fame makes you significant in the sense that you become fodder for the gossip magazines, it doesn't necessarily mean that the legacy you leave counts for anything in heaven.

I remember a story of a simple, uneducated guy on the street who was on all accounts a bum. He managed to work out what an evangelistic gospel leaflet meant, and he decided to believe in God. He didn't have much and still slept on the street, but he made the most of it. He used to always be cruel to animals, but after that simple encounter with a leaflet, he would refrain from kicking them. 

He didn't accomplish a lot in life, but he died trying to keep a drunk guy warm by letting the drunk guy sleep in his crude cardboard shelter, while using his own body to shield the inebriated stranger from the rain and the cold. In heaven, he was given a higher honor than someone whose death had made headlines around the world. One line that really challenged me was the statement 'He used all the love he had'.

How many of us have so much more than this guy would have had? What have we done with what we've been given?

For the past few years, I've wrestled with 'what can I do? How can I be significant?' I've been through cycles of denial, giving up, being frustrated, being consumed by busy-ness of life. But the desire remained and refused to go away. 

Although I eventually gave up any thought of doing anything about it, it  niggled like a toothache in the night. Like the feeling that you've forgotten something but can't figure out what. The answer was both unlikely and yet complete: 

"You are most significant when you are obedient to Me."

"Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed than the fat of rams."

1 Samuel 15:22

"For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God."

 Colossians 3:3

For the love of Christ compels us, because we judge thus: that if One died for all, then all died; and He died for all, that those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for him who died for them and rose again.

2 Cor 5:14-15

When we are obedient:

• we don't need to worry about what we should do (because we've been told!)
• we are walking in the centre of God's will, which is always where His provision and blessings are
• we will be given the ability to complete it; we're in no danger of being left out on a limb 
• we can be sure that it's God's responsibility to make things happen -- we just need to do what we're instructed to do. The rest will follow.

I think of everyone's lives being entwined together like the threads on a tapestry. You never know whose life you'll touch when you step out in faith. God knows. That's why He asks us to be obedient.

Significance is obedience. Who'd have known?

Nice to meet you

Hi!

Before we start, let's be up-front. I'm a Christian - and this blog will have a lot of stuff centred around that. If you don't like that genre, you're welcome to switch pages. If you don't have anything good to say, don't. If you're interested, I hope that it can encourage, inspire and arouse a hunger to know God personally for yourself.

If you're already a Christian, I pray that you and I will both be those to whom God will say, 'Well done, good and faithful servant' on that Day because we chose to live for Him, instead of ourselves.

"...and He died for all, that those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again." 2 Cor 5:15