"It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age, if they fall away, to be brought back to repentance, because to their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace." Hebrews 6:4-6

I saw some old friends I knew who were once Christians and have not been to church in years. I don't know where they are now spiritually; but I did notice that during a time of worship, my friend was conscious to choose not to sing, nor pray..or at least to sing out loud, or to pray with a bowed head. I was saddened and troubled. How many friends do I know had once walked closely with Christ, now perhaps reject Him, or at least appear not to be in worship of Him now. Hebrews 6:4; spent so much time troubling and praying over this; what of those whom I love as brothers and sisters who no longer follow Christ? Can they come back? I know there are the different 'camps'. I had subscribed to the camp that a true rejection of Christ was actually hypothetical; no one who truly knew and tasted how ultimately Good it is to be in intimacy with God and to share in the Holy Spirit could ever walk away because it was soooo good. So those who seemingly walk away really did so because they never really knew Him; they never were truly Christians to begin with. I think I chose this because I needed to believe that there is a way back to Christ, for those dear friends who chose to walk away; I don't really know if it's a good thing that I my hope for them is for them to have never truly known Christ in the first place, so then at least there's a fighting chance that they can come to know Him truly.

I just got World Vision's reminder that it will be my sponsor child's birthday soon. Then I realized that I didn't even know when that would be; nor did I even know how old she was. I had to dig for 5 mins in my files to figure it out. Boy, I suck big time...I really hope that this isn't indicative of how bad of a mother I'd be...seems like everyone has been thinking about kids; for me, I'm always asking myself what I would do in a certain situation and would that be a good 'mother-choice' or bad one; would I be a weak push-over mum, or an over-bearing, too high expectation mum, would I be a cool mum who knows when to leave it up to the kids to figure it out, or one who gives too little direction and discipline...I sure hope I could be a good mum.
However, present situation indicates that I'd just be a neglectful mom.

Milenna Santos from Brazil - she'll be turning 7. Wow, she was 4 when I started to sponsor her in my masters year...it's sad because I can see her thinning out in her pictures, she was a chubby little kid at 4..pretty skinny now.

my brother just showed me a clip of the American captive, Nicholas Berg get slowly beheaded by his captors. i'm really sad and really disturbed; i only watched 20 seconds of it and walked away. i'm really sad and really disturbed.

Diss of the week....

By unanimous vote, the OMC had agreed that I would be the worst cook of us all if I were to have to move out on my own...(i totally agree with them!)

Happiness and Joy..

crazy weekend; i think i drove over 600kms this weekend, but it was worth it :) It was good hanging out with my girls in Huntsville - we shared and celebrated Irie's last weekend as a single! and we celebrated the official 323 - it was awesome! You know there's happiness, where you laugh because of good times, good jokes, funny stories...and then there's joy - when it's God-blessed, a gift from Him that brings not only a smile on your face, but a warmth in your heart that you know is something eternal. Seeing my close girlfriends move on to the next stage, with a godly guy in a Christ-centered relationship gives me pure joy! It's that same feeling when you watch someone proclaim their faith in Christ and get baptized, or when you hear of someone come to Christ finally, or when you listen to an amazing testimony - these are the times i know that I'm experiencing the fruit of the Holy Spirit! Well, I praise God for the OMC (along with the stigma, jokes and attitude) - if you look at how we've come to know each other, there are so many different inter-minglings of life - I know God took great lengths to bring us together and I'm so thankful to Him and for them.

I guess we coined the term OMC b/c of that year of contemplation of the benefits of being single for God...Probably coincided with the year(s) of 'Amazon women' in CCF...but I'm happily seeing the eventual disbanding of the official OMC, but with no doubt, we're gonna be one of those life-time cell groups for sure.

Summer Conference..

God works through unexpected twists for sure..though the original English adult speaker was away, we joined the teens and I was challenged by the messages...and ironically, I was most challenged by a Christian movie (which I had initially thought was going to be another cheesy film) they played on Sat night called Time Changer and it really got me thinking about how many things have I compromised in my daily living? The premise of the movie was to show the dangers of teaching moral behavior without teaching Jesus as the absolute authority that moral behavior is for. So a Christian scholar in the 1800's travels to today's times to see our relativistic society that the contemporary church has come to accept and realizes how wrong it is to advocate Christian behavior without teaching that Christ is the source of morality. Anyway, it made me think of what I've come to accept, and even adopt in my own life. Breaking the Sabbath, allowing the misuse, and perhaps even my own misuse of God's holy name (I know I say OMG without even knowing it); 'secondary' curses like damn, crap, hell, ass; crude jokes - either making them or laughing at them, standards in watching movies...there's lots. Bonhoeffer in the Cost of Discipleship laments over how much the church (well, ME cuz I comprise part of the church body) has let the world seep into it..how it has knowingly compromised God's holy standards for the sake of being 'approachable' to the new-comer. If we compare how short we (contemporary Christians) fall against the measures of the 'old-school' Christians of the 1800's or those in the 1600's, or those in the New Testament days, how much more do we fall short of God's perfect standards for us? Sigh..anyway, I hope I can try to be more disciplined in the things I can work on..James 2 is one of my biggest challenges..

this is soo long..i just have a lot on my mind!

i should be sleepign right now, but i'm waiting for norton antivirus to finish scanning my computer b/c there's spyware on my computer..booo hooo....and now my explorer opens to some weird page and ads...all kinds of ads...are popping up...booo hooo....

tomorrow is summer conference...yay! i'm excited about it!; strangely, the English adult's speaker fell ill at the last minute and everyone will now be joining the teens' track. i find that these things happen quite often at Christian conferences and i'm wonder if it's spiritual warfare; I remember Urbana 2001 when we met speakers who spoke of past Urbanas where they suddenly got sick; or lost their voice the day before their speaking time; and sooo many people were praying for him and he recovered his voice to deliver a great message; which perhpas moved many to the mission field....i always think of this b/c of Ephesians 6:12:

"For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms."

i admit; after helping out with promotions, i personally didn't pray very hard about the rest of the preparations very much...

ugh, time for bed..the neocitran is kicking in; and i'd better be waking up in 5 hours..

Heaven

This past Friday during small group, we started to talk about what we thought Heaven would be like. I never gave it much thought because it was just so unimaginable that I thought it was futile to extend past my puny human imagination of what glorious God's place is. But it was a good exercise because it gave me Joy to remember one of Jesus' promises - that He will prepare a room for us there. I find many times, this isn't dwelled upon; for me, probably because I feel guilty focusing on a 'reward' of my faith, instead of focusing on God, for being God.

Then today, while I was driving home from the gym, I wondered whether or not we would feel pain in Heaven. Suffering will be gone, but pain is more complicated - God feels pain - I pain Him, we all pain Him, lost souls pain Him. Would I feel that aching pain in my heart when I realize that I'm in Heaven and some of those I loved weren't there with me? Would I feel the pain when I realize that some of those who weren't there were because I had forsaken opportunities to share the Gospel to them when we lived on Earth together? It would be the worst pain; because there would be no 'later' to try harder or a 'maybe they came to Christ at their moment of passing away. we don't know but God knows'....by then, it will be clear - that clear division between Heaven and Hell and knowing who's where. And pain is also an integral part of love - we are in pain because we love people and when we see them hurt, or when they hurt us, we are in pain. I guess there won't be people hurting each other because that wouldn't be possible. But part of loving someone is also enduring pain; God showed His ultimate love for us by sending His only begotten Son to suffer and die innocently for us - how much did that hurt the Father to have to turn His back on Jesus - and that was ultimate love...

well, I know that God's Heaven is perfect, unimaginably perfect...

i had a really good weekend. Praise God! Saturday, after my English team training meeting, the entire family was home and we worked on fixing up the house together. I'm particularly happy because I've been praying for better interaction between all of us, and because it was nostalgic. We're getting the house ready for sale and we were all re-hanging the paintings, chaning things up, doing the gardening work and we spent the entire day accomplishing something together. Sounds silly to be happy about doing Spring cleaning together, but it's been such a long time since we've all been around and didn't have other committments to go to. It reminded me of childhood; when we used to all chip in to do the gardening work, or help build the deck.

Went to Ethiopian House for dinner, interesting food - it was yum; I had trouble keeping the food off the table (I'm such a disgrace at restuarants - can't take me anywhere!) Rented Matchstick Men with Suzanna and Olivia and hung out at Suzanana's place - good times indeed!

Irony makes the world go round :)

larry and the vegas chicks come back from vacation, and without fail, larry entertains all at his own expense...

Larry & Reclaimed Water [story courtesy of Rosie](recount stolen from chickvegas,]

In the Grand Canyon area, everything is about conserving nature – even the toilets. In our hotel room, the sign on the toilet lid specifically said – “Reclaimed water – avoid contact”. I don’t know what “reclaimed water” is but in the toilet context it can’t be good. Finding this hilarious, Rosie and Linda pointed the sign out to Vacation Larry, upon which Vacation Larry immediately ran and pretended to stick his head in the toilet so Linda could take a picture. Unfortunately Vacation Larry’s very expensive sunglasses fell into the reclaimed water toilet bowl in the process. So much for “avoiding contact”!

And might I add that he had to fish it out with his hands...

Diss of the week..

This Sunday at church - as I'm buying ice cream for the bake sale - one of the kids says to me sincerely - "Happy Mother's Day".

Moving - Betraying the roots??

Our famliy decided earlier this year that we had enough of this neighbourhood and decided to move more north next year. That means we're leaving our house of 22 years and all the Scarborough roots behind. Some friends have joked (and every joke has its truth, else it wouldn't be funny) that I was betraying my Scarlem roots - I guess there was some sort of pride, or camaradarie in living in the so-called ghetto.

Well, just last week, one of my neighbours, the last of the 3 original families of this neighbourhood got beat down pretty badly. He was walking his dog with his wife at the park by my old primary school at 9pm and 2 teenage kids came to rob him. They beat his head with a baseball bat so hard that he needed 13 stitches and now he can't stand for more than 5 mins or look down without getting dizzy. He's about 70 years old. And what, they stole $10 from his wallet? How much could he be carrying if was was walking the dog? This is the type of thing that makes me so vexed. It was the total disregard and disrespect of life - they could have killed him for $10. Please pray for him and his family as they must be pretty shaken by this. As for me, I need to be reminded that God is the final judge - all must stand before him to give an account. And He reminded me yesterday:

Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: "It is mine to avenge; I will repay," says the Lord. On the contrary: "If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head." (Romans 12:18-20)

ughh - a verse that i usually have no problems with - I'm having such a hard time with it when I think about these things. Which brings me to another thought on moving...

My friend and his mom live in Malvern and his mom vows never to leave, even though there were shootings right across the street. She vows that they must be the light in their neighborhood; the city on the hill (Matt 5:14). It had got me to think - wow, am I a coward? Was it not my wish to reach out to the urban poor - well, it came to our footsteps - while we were sleeping. And now we're packing up and running away to yuppie-ville? Though it's too late to be back-tracking now, I wish I had thought about this earlier, before influencing my parents on making the move-decision...

I've buckled...since I already spend too much time on the computer, might as well be constructive and record my thoughts in cyberspace, so that one day, when I run for political office, it will all come back and bite me where it counts.