SummerAir’11 - 感谢主

..::*+ Small Talk +*::..
Everyone has his/her own personalities. If I cannot hate, I will avoid.
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It was just another fine Monday. Two among us had to fly back to Stuttgart. After sending them and watched them walked into the Terminal tunnel, we were left undecided. It is not because of we didn’t know what else we wanted to do, but about what we could do – everyone was quite tired. But Still, it would be a waste if she were to go back to Hostel with us to rest. She had never been to Berlin, it was her first daylight day in Berlin, and, after all, she wanted to walk around in Berlin too.


I was undecided. It is not because I wanted to go back to rest, but I was still injected with “I –Kiss-Dating-Goodbye” sorta mood and well, I took the pill “to avoid one-boy-one-girl situation”. The consequence wasn’t just about I didn’t walk the talk, or the taught, but I knew, or I thought, I would be flamed (as always).


Nevertheless, in the end I decided to go along with her and bring her around, to those places that I had been to already, twice. I actually did pray before we started our one-on-one trip – I pray that God would guard me from either doing anything stupid, or pouring out anything unnecessarily. I knew myself to the extend that I knew what I would do or say.


We separated from the rest at the Hauptbahnhof (main train station). We took an S-Bahn that heads to where we would like to go: the Island of museums. I called a Berliner-Malaysian to see if he was free already to bring us around, since he should know Berlin much better than me. He told me that the Ost-Berlin (east-side of Berlin) was raining heavily. I couldn’t believe. Although it wasn’t super sunny, it certainly didn’t look like it would rain any time soon. It rained, however, like cats and dogs. There’s where I learned my first lesson.


We hopped off at “Hackerscher Markt”. It was raining and the wind was blowing. We were stuck in the stop. I complained to myself (like I always do), “great, how are we gonna go out and take photos and walk around?” If you know me well, you’d probably picturing me and my stressed-mood, complaining. She stepped closer to the exit, looked at the sky, and acknowledged that it was indeed a heavy downpour.


But she said, “we can’t stop the weather from raining, but we can pray. And if it is our Father in Heaven’s will to let us out to play, the rain will stop. But maybe He wants to water the plants on the ground. No matter what, however, we should be thankful.” And she prayed.


I was partly affected by the impact of the rain against our plan, and stunned by how she interpreted the situation. But for that few short seconds, I was speechless.


Amen.


We chatted for a while, while looking at people running in and out of the station. But to my surprise, after a few minutes, the rain stopped. It seriously stopped. I got excited, “yay we can go out to play again!” My heart beamed.


She, however, said to me, “we should remember to be thankful”. And we gave thanks to God for answering our prayer and let us out to play.


In the end we took a lot of photos and I learned quite some techniques and we lived happily ever after.
No, that’s not how it ends. It wasn’t a Disney fairytale.


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It was just a simple story. A simple yet a real story. It sparked a thought in me. It showed the contrast between us. The level of faith and submission and obedience. In tough situations, I complain and have anything to be blamed on. In complicated situation, I try to change the course of how things will happen, in accordance to how I want it to be. In situations where I cannot control, I let it lose. In short, I messed things up.


The lesson that I learned here wasn’t about God answering our prayers. In fact, who are we to demand God to have our wishes and desires fulfilled? Every prayer that we made to Him will no-doubly reach His presence, but as human we tend to forget, that of all things that we can strive to take control of, we can’t stop time for flowing. He is a God of providence – He will provide, only when He sees the situation fits.


It is about one of the fundamentals of following Christ – we acknowledge that He is our Creator and for that we give thanks to Him. We give thanks, because as how He chooses to give, He owns the authority over us to take as well. One of the verse in Casting Crown’s song always resound in my head:

I’ll praise You in the storm.

How many of us can actually praise Him when we are in real bad situations? In crisis? In deep troubles? In a hole? I must confess that I myself for one couldn’t do it. I want to learn to live it out though, while it certainly looks like I’m on the training and test field, considering all the things that are happening around me. Nevertheless, it is so easy to blame – even to blame God Himself – than to give thanks to Him, and pray:


“Lord, what do you want me to learn in this situation?”


It must be a conscious decision to make, at least to myself.

These (trials) have come so that your faith – of greater worth than gold, which perishes even through refined by fire – may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.
1. Peter 1:7 (Parenthesis mine)

How many of us are to see this coming? I wasn’t. But I do want it now. It isn’t about how many blessings God has given us, nor about how tangled a complication God wants you to see it through, but about giving thanks to Him, who knows us much more than we know ourselves, and loves us, much more than we love anyone else. Jia Jin did tell me to face all the messes, which I created for myself in the first place, with another new attitude, rather than that of how I always unconsciously used to face them. I guess this is what he meant back then.


In fact, there are a lot of things for us to be thankful to God for. The question here remains, is that whether we are humble enough to be grateful for? A simple test we can do is to jot down 10 things of what we can be thankful to God for. Let’s be concrete.


1. I thank You God, that You still woke me up in time to go for work, although I turned off my clock alarm.
2. I thank You God, that You brought me safely to my workplace, before the rain started to pour down.
3. I thank You God, that You provided me enough wisdom I need to solve the programming tasks from my boss.
4. I thank You God, that You provided me enough wealth to live through the days.
5. I thank You God, that You give me a good physical health and speedy recovery after the trip.
6. I thank You God, because You provide me with wonderful amazing people – those who already know you and not alike – who chain sparks of  thoughts in me to live a better life in Christ Jesus.
7. I thank You God, that whenever I face temptations You give me the strength to walk away than to drill into it.
8. I thank You God, for all the lessons that You taught me, despite the fact that they really came in a heavy price to pay.
9. I thank You God, that in times when I desire to do something unfavorable in Your eyes, You reminded me of Your great love for me.
10. I thank You God, that despite I feel different being in this society, Your faithfulness remains.


And I thank You Lord, for this wonderful piece of beautiful memory and lesson to learn.


I won’t dare you to do this, but feel free to give comments of 10 things you feel thankful to God for.


Be blessed. And remember, 感谢主。