Parable of the Pencil

I heard this story today at an assembly.  I don't quite remember, but I think that she amended some parts of the story to make it more inclusive. *sigh*

The Pencil Maker took the pencil aside, just before putting him into the box. 

"There are 5 things you need to know," he told the pencil, "Before I send you out into the world. Always remember them and never forget, and you will become the best pencil you can be."
"One: You will be able to do many great things, but only if you allow yourself to be held in Someone's hand."
"Two: You will experience a painful sharpening from time to time, but you'll need it to become a better pencil."
"Three: You will be able to correct any mistakes you might make."
"Four: The most important part of you will always be what's inside."
"And Five: On every surface you are used on, you must leave your mark. No matter what the condition, you must continue to write."
The pencil understood and promised to remember, and went into the box with purpose in its heart.

Now replacing the place of the pencil with you.  Always remember them and never forget, and you will become the best person you can be. 
One: You will be able to do many great things, but only if you allow yourself to be held in God's hand. And allow other human beings to access you for the many gifts you possess.
Two: You will experience a painful sharpening from time to time, by going through various problems in life, but you'll need it to become a stronger person. 
Three: You will be able to correct any mistakes you might make. 
Four: The most important part of you will always be what's on the inside.
And Five: On every surface you walk through, you must leave your mark. No matter what the situation, you must continue to do your duties.

Allow this parable on the pencil to encourage you to know that you are a special person and only you can fulfill the purpose to which you were born to accomplish.
Never allow yourself to get discouraged and think that your life is insignificant and cannot make a change.

I really liked this story.  I actually like this one I found online even better because while the principal was reading it, I was actually thinking about how it parallels our Christian walks (I think she omitted the part about God in her explanation of point 1).  

But yes, when she was reading about point 1, I was thinking about how God holds me in the palm of His hand and how I can accomplish so much with Him in my life, by his power doing all the work!  Point 2 probably resonated more powerfully than some of the other points as I feel that I have gone through so much sharpening in the last 6 months, from family, work, and ministry.  But God has definitely made me a much stronger person for it.  It has also allowed me to rely on him evermore so!  And with God I can definitely correct any mistakes, or sins, that I have made.  It is through the daily renewal and washing only given by the blood of Jesus Christ!  Hallelujah!  Point 4 is quite the cliche, but still very true.  Too often we get sucked into the consumeristic antics of the North American society, but at the end of the day none of that matters if you are a sucky person on the inside.  God doesn't care for the outside, but really looks at our hearts.  I have to continually search my heart and ensure I am living my life for Him, and Him alone!  Point 5 spoke to me as well, with all the stuff that God has been putting me through.  It is true that whatever situation God puts me in, I have to respond in a way that is holy and pleasing to him.

I love how God speaks to me, regardless of the medium.  Love, love, love!

Teachings

Obedience.

Self-Sacrifice.

Patience.

Trust.

This is what God has been teaching me recently through sermons, Sunday school, devotions, fellowship and all that good stuff! =)

Parents

I love my parents, I really do, even if they do get on my nerves sometimes, but that is what parents do.  They are doing it because they love me, because they care, because they have invested 20+ years into me, and really they do it because they really, really love me.  Yet, I forget how much they have actually done for me in my life.

When I look back on my relationship with my parents it has definitely been a rollercoaster ride.  The early years when they were working extremely hard, dad with the restaurant and mom working crazy hours because she worked at a Chinese restaurant.  Their jobs weren't glamourous, but they did it because they loved me and my brother.  I know that this is only human nature, but sometimes I do wonder what others think of my family and the work that they do.  I am not saying that I am ashamed of my parents, of course I am not, they had to do what they had to do to support our family.  This meant sacrifices, which usually meant time in my household.  However, I look back on it now and the dividends have paid off, we own our house, we have 2 cars, we have been on a number of family vacations, and my dad has fixed up every room in the house to the best of his abilities because it is one of his hobbies.  Further, even though we are Chinese and there is a lack of physical affection, I know that my parents love each other.  They now watch Chinese dramas together and go fishing every week from the time the walleye season opens to when the bass season closes.  And after 25 years of marriage, they are also going on vacation together for two months by themselves in the coming months!

Some news I heard this past weekend really made me realize how lucky I am to have two parents who are relatively healthy (the aches and pains of getting older...) who love me and my brother so much.  My parents told me about a neighbour down the street who had just passed away, she was only 55 years old, younger than my dad.  She has two daughters who are a few years younger than me.  My parents told me that she had died from cancer.  What makes this story even more heartwrenching is that only 8 short years ago, these two girls lost their dad suddenly from a heart attack.  I can not even start to imagine the pain and sorrow they are going through.  The questions that are racing through their head.  And their thoughts on the future.  This situation makes me cherish my parents even more.  It is so sad that in order for me to realize this, something so tragic has to happen.

Even though they may annoy me at times and bug me about little things, I have to hold steadfast onto the fact that they are doing it out of love.  And for me to really demonstrate to them the love of Christ in my life, to serve them and honour them, because it would really suck if I could not spend eternity with them in heaven.

Patience

This is one lesson that God has been teaching me over and over and over again this past week.  It seems like in the past week, I have been put into situations or placed myself in situations where my patience has been tested and more often than not, I have had to draw on the power of the Holy Spirit to hold my tongue or to guide my actions, because I know that if I relied on myself the results would have been disasterous, they would not have been edifying at all, and God would not have been glorified.  But man, does it get exhausting or what?!  However, I will continue running the race for God!

More Sister Lovin'

I am truly blessed to have sisters that love me so much.  They know when to push for more information and to refrain when necessary.  When I say pray for me, I know that they are praying for me, even when I do not give details.

Tonight at prayer meeting, we were grouped off by sexes.  We have been doing the numbering off, and that has been working great as well, but I'm glad that we split off the way we did tonight.  I definitely could not have talked about some things if there were boys in my group.  God made us different for a reason! ;)  But yes, I'm glad I was able to have some time to talk with my sisters and to really pray with them.  The popcorn prayer was awesome, being able to so freely converse with God was great!  And to have the honour to pray for my sisters was humbling as well.  God has revealed so much to me and my relationship with each sister there tonight that I know he brought me there tonight for a reason.  'Tis was a great night of prayer and sisterly bonding.

Sisterly Love

Today I had the opportunity to pray with a dear sister in Christ.  It is so great to see how God is working in her life and the passions and burdens he has put on her heart.  It also reminds me of my time at CCF and my spiritual journey during those four years.  My journey was definitely tumultous at times, non-existent at times, fruitful at times, and joyful at other times.  It is too bad when we don't realize how powerful and helpful God is until we look back in retrospect, well for me at least.  Talking with her really brought back some things, it made me think about my whole time at CCF and how God used me.  It is so awesome to see how God is going to use her as well.  I am also honoured that God used me to help her through this "stressful" time in her life.  I love praying for my fellow brethren, helping them carry their burdens, and calling out to God to sustain, renew, and empower us!

However, I think after lunch today I missed an opportunity to minister to another sister.  It makes me sad and breaks my heart when I know that something is wrong, but I do not have to opportunity to address it.  I pray that she is doing alright, and like I've always said, sometimes all I can do it pray.

Decisions

Teaching is definitely one of my passions in my life.  God has definitely instilled this in me.  However, I am now at a crossroads in my very green teaching career.  At the moment I am qualified to teach grades 4-10.  It is quite a large range, and seriously, with only two placements in teacher's college and the limited number of placement options, I got placed in grade 6 and 8--not that much a difference in terms of teaching styles and students' needs.  However, I have placed myself in a situation where I have been able to expose myself to the younger kids and hopefully to high school students as well.  And now I am pondering about my next ABQ course, whether to take the Primary ABQ or the Senior ABQ.  I know I have not prayed enough about it, and I know that God will tell me something.  I am just confused right now.

Attack

In the last couple of weeks, I have felt the attacks on my faith.  It has not been persecution where I'm being stoned or my house is being burned down for what I believe in, but it is the attack where I know Satan feels is most effective on me.  It is those underhanded ambushes, the covert operations, or sneak attacks when I least expect them.  However, I know that this is when I need to be the most on guard.  I am led to 1Timothy 4:2, "Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke, and encourage - with great patience and careful instruction."  I know that God is speaking to me about two specific incidents in the last few weeks, times where I know that I should have taken a greater stand, to have corrected, then rebuked when necessary, and then to encourage.  However, looking at the two incidents, I know that I will definitely need lots of patience and to be grounded in the Word to provide sound instruction.

Hotpot

Saturday evening was a fun, fun night!  Full of laughs, great and enlightening conversations, and lots of food, too much food actually!  Reminiscing on the last time we had hotpot at Spam's house was fun.  I still don't understand how we were able to clog up the sink with our bean sprouts.  And looking back, why would we buy bean sprouts in the first place?!

(Some snippets from the evening)

Family Ties

My first day volunteering at a junior school, God revealed how truly blessed I am.  I shared with Felix and Kelly that evening how truly lucky and blessed we are to have families that love us so much and cared for us for the past 20+ years!  I don't believe we truly grasp how much our family does for us until we witness what other children/people are going through or went through as children.

We joke now as adults about how frayed the featherduster was or how many broken chopsticks there were but we now understand more clearly why our parents had to discipline us.  There is love behind that discipline, they want us to grow up into individuals who understand right from wrong, to be compassionate to others, and to have integrity, doing the right thing when people are not looking. 

As a teacher, I come across many students of various ethnic, religious, and cultural backgrounds.  We are taught as teachers in teacher's college and within the various school boards that we need to be accepting of all individuals.  I may comment on this another day in regards to how I can demonstrate Jesus in my workplace, but this post is about something else, something that saddens me.

Without getting into too many specifics, I was working with a boy and he had a bit of a breakdown because that morning, his breakfast consisted of one piece of luncheon ham.  It was snacktime and he was eating parts of his lunch because that is all his parent had packed him.  The teacher made him stop or else he would not have a lunch to eat and lunchtime.  He was a little upset at this fact and it just snowballed from there.  He could not concentrate on the language work he was supposed to complete, complaining his stomach hurt and that he was hungry.  It just broke my heart, but also frustrated and angered me as well.  Afterwards, speaking with the teacher, it seems like this is not the first time.

This put some things into perspective for me.  When sharing with Felix and Kelly that night, it showed me how truly blessed we are.  We have a family that loves us, a roof over our heads, a warm bed to crawl into at night, clothes on our back, and food to eat at our disposal.  In addition, we have the luxuries of attending post-secondary education, gadgets at our fingertips, and cars to get us to places.  Too often we take this for granted.  I seriously do not remember a time when I went to school hungry when I was in grade school(of course, high school and university don't count because I was dumb and too cool for breakfst).  I am so grateful for my parents who have worked so incredibly hard their entire lives to provide the essentials, and so much more, for me.  It's just sad that I needed a wake-up call like this hard situation to realize and remember this fact.

Fellowship

Last night was definitely true fellowship with my brothers and sisters at MCAC.  I believe that he has called each and every one of us to Felix's house last night for a reason.  May it be to hear the story of a fellow sister, to break bread with each other, to pray for our dear sister, to sing and offer praises to God through our singing, or just to experience each other's company.

I am so encouraged and amazed at how God can transform each and every one of us, in such a small period of time.  But we need to remember that God's timing for everything in our lives is perfect.  He won't give us something that we cannot handle at a particular time and without preparing us.  This thought goes through my mind sometimes how there are things that are thrown my way and I do not feel adequately prepared to handle them, not wise, smart, or equipped enough.  However, as we go through these things, more often than not, God has already done the equipping and we haven't even noticed!  Our God definitely knows us inside and out, and why wouldn't he?  He is the one who made us, every fine detail of us, and he had set out a plan for each of us.

Thus, as I look at my dear sister and hearing about what God has in store for her, the known and unknown, I am excited for her, yet I know Satan is going to try and make strongholds in her life and all we can do it pray and claim onto the promises God has bestowed on her and the peace that she is feeling now!

It was an awesome, awesome night!

Quotes of the Night

S: "Who is Pierre Trudeau?"

A: (Looking incredulously at S) "Are you serious?!"

S: "We have soap for the dishwasher."

K: "Where?"

S: "You know, in the washroom or something... CasCAD right?"

K: "You could cut glass!"

A: "What is going on?!?!"

K: "What cuts glass A?"

A: "I don't know... diamonds? FIRE??"

K: "Look, the 'fun see' is not fun anymore."

Round 3

Sick once again. This is round 3 of sickness. It is different this time around. Not so much the sore throat and cough, but the stuffed and runny nose. Bah! I called it though last week, when two days in a row I show up to my students' homes and they were sick. Hopefully it won't last that long.

The Cross

Even though I had a part in planning the bible study today for Zoe, going through Hebrews and such, I do not think I fully experienced the power and significance of the cross until Felix read from the Case for Christ.  Hearing about what is involved during the flogging, what happened when Jesus was dragging the beam, then being nailed to the cross, his experience on the cross, I know that it impacted me.  It definitely made the cross even bigger for me!  The response song definitely captured my feelings, "I'm humbled by your mercy, and I'm broken inside."  Thank you, Jesus.

Team

Your friend!

My friend!

Running joke between the team as introduced to us by Kell on Tuesday.  It is quite funny and all out of fun and love.  But apparently you can't use it against someone, hahaha!  I love my family in Christ!

Blessings

This week has definitely been a week where I have experienced God's blessings.  In my conversations with people, devotionals, and just experiencing his love for me and others.

In a conversation that I had on Tuesday morning amidst the crazy snow that was falling, I came to realize how easily Satan can get into our thoughts and minds.  It boggles my mind that even when I sin, I feel/think that I am the only one going through it or struggling with it.  But in my mind I know that others are struggling through it as well but then irrationality sets in, as inputted by Satan, and I believe that I am alone and the only one.  Even though I know that others struggle with their sins, Satan makes me believe that I am alone in my sin, which causes me to isolate myself, and feel shameful.  However, rationality does eventually prevail through the power of his Holy Spirit and reading his word and I know that I am redeemed and renewed each day.  But it was still eye-opening to hear and to experience it.

A conversation the following day touched upon this again and it just reaffirmed everything that I already knew.  As humans, we seriously are dumb, no wonder God made us analogous to one of the dumbest animals on earth, sheep.

I think that God has revealed his answer to me about certain things and I am glad, however, I still need to keep praying about it--I do still have about a month! ;)  It is refreshing to experience new perspectives in terms of serving and the other things that come before and about with that.  God is definitely opening doors, it is now just a matter of which one to go through!  It's exciting and scary all at the same time!  See, this is what 2009 is going to bring!

Difficulties

After the great sermon on Sunday, it was followed by a wonderful Sunday School lesson led by my dear sister Kelly.  Even though she doesn't think she did well facilitating the discussions I took a lot out of it--maybe not in terms of the lesson per se, but what others contributed in terms of answering the questions that she posed.  I don't know what to think of some of them though!

How do we as Christians deal differently with difficulties in our lives?  I wanted to post my thoughts earlier about this, but now I know why it didn't happen until now.  Personally, I do not feel like I am going through difficulties anymore, not like 2-3 weeks ago where I was so heavily burdened.  After tonight's PM it even puts more things into perspective and how my problems seem so small.  However, I also know that God will solve all problems, big and small, mines and others.  We just really need to rely on God in these times of trouble and to claim onto his promises for our lives.

Shepherd

Yesterday's message was so good!  Some of the things that Pastor Scott spoke about really rang true, and it was crazy that he did not even get past the first line of Psalm 23!

The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.

I have heard sermons before about the lifestyle of being a shepherd and how sheep are really dumb (which are analogous to us as human beings).  However, Pastor Scott put a new perspective on shepherds and shepherding.

1. As a shepherd, you are more than likely to be quite poor.  This is because as a shepherd you have saved and saved until you can purchase a flock of your own and then once you have purchased your flock, it is a lifelong commitment because the sheep depend on you for everything.  Further, there is no real rest for the shepherd as he has to tend to his flock in the blistering heat of summer and the frigid cold of winter.  The shepherd invests everything into taking care of his flock.

This is so much like Jesus where he took care of us by leaving everything he had on the cross.  I loved Pastor Scott's story about this boy and his boat:

There once was this boy who became very interested in boats.  After seeing this very nice toy ship he decided to make one of his own.  He worked so hard on it and it was finally ready to be used on the water.  He brought it down to the water and in the beginning everything was going great, the boat was sailing back and forth, but then there was a change in the wind and his boat started sailing further and further away from the boy, until he could no longer see it in the distance.  He had lost his boat.  

Then one day while he was walking down the street, something caught his eye in the toy store.  He had to look 2 or 3 times to make sure that it was true, but there it was, it was his boat!  

He quickly ran into the toy shop and told the owner, "That is my boat in the window!  I made it!  Can I have it back?"  

The store owner replied, "Of course you can... As long as you have the money to pay for it."

So the boy ran home and worked hard to get enough money to pay for the boat.  When he finally had enough, he ran to the store, pulled out all his money and coins onto the table.  The store owner counted the money and took the boat from the store window.

The boy took the boat, hugged it and said, "You are mine."

Isn't that such a great story?  This is an analogy to God's relationship with us.  We are twice his--He made us, yet we fall short of his glory because of our sin, we are sinners by nature and by choice, and become separated from him, but he buys us back through his son, Jesus Christ, and we become his once more.

2. God had to mark and name his flock.  This is where the second part of the first line comes into play.  In order to differentiate their own flock from others, shepherds would have to mark their flock with symbols and colours.  As Christians we have that mark as well.  It may not be as evident as the symbols on the sheep, but when we have Christ in our lives we are changed and it makes us different from other flocks.

In addition, when we know God, we will be content in Christ and trust that God knows the best for us.  This includes blessings and trials.  And we have to remember that sometimes God's richest blessings are trials, this is when we draw the closest to God.

Sore

I don't believe that I am that out of shape (refrain from your comments =p).  But yesterday's gym day of dodgeball and volleyball has definitely destroyed me.  I was already feeling the effects of it last night during the TC rally where I could not get comfortable sitting in any position in the pews.  My back and leg muscles just felt really tired.  Then my soreness gets worse after I come home and fall asleep.  I am actually awaken by the soreness in my legs when I rolled around in my bed.  Man, today it was pretty bad going up and down stairs, even walking and getting up after sitting down in particular positions for long periods of time. If only I could know that I had a great workout without feeling the effects of it afterwards!

Dumb

Last night I went out with Ruby and Jeff after the TC rally.  I didn't want Jeff to just go home by himself on his birthday so I suggested we go out for some food and fun, and Ruby agreed!  We went to BR and had some interesting and funny conversations!

We somehow got on to the subject of some of the dumb things we did when we were younger and in our high school days.  When I think back upon high school I definitely realize now how dumb some of thing I did were!  The one incident that sticks out in my head is piling 9 people into a Dodge Neon and actually travelling some distance, at least 10 minutes, on city roads where people could definitely see us!  That was quite dumb.  Found out some funny things about Jeff and Ruby as well, but I guess you'll have to ask them yourselves.  It's crazy how our thinking is when we are 16 years old, we are invincible and on top of the world, no one can stop us.