Red and Yellow, Black and White

I remember singing the song “Jesus loves the little children, then “red & yellow, black & white” when I was young (I think I was 5 years old then). All I knew at that time was Jesus loves the little children but it didn’t occur to me about the ‘difference in colour’.

Now, as I think of that song, I give thanks for two very good friends of mine, who are of different skin colour from me. We share many things with each other, from our struggles to things we go through in our families. They also are my friends who saw me through the difficult times. I treasure their friendships a lot.

Hey, it’s possible to build good friendships, not just the ‘hi and bye’ kind or online buddies, but deeper friendships with people of ‘different colour’.

Feel free to share your thoughts about this.

“I see the beauty in the tones of our skin” (D.C. Talk – Coloured People)

Stoppp....!!!

A friend once advised me to journal, saying “It’s the stop that keeps you going.” I found what she said to be true. Pausing to stop and reflect allows me time to consider my next step.

But this ‘stop’ is more than just journaling. It’s a lifestyle of stopping so that we can keep going. It’s a habit of taking time off consciously to recover, uncover and discover.

To recover is to stop to rest physically, to recover from a long day’s work or a tiring week. When we are busy, the first thing that decreases is the number of hours we sleep. There’s nothing really wrong with that, but we must learn to schedule in sleeping time later. Let us not be caught as persons who have to fill up every hour of the day with activities.

To uncover is to be silent before God and ourselves in order to lay bare and allow different concerns/worries/issues/events to surface. To think about what caused us to make a certain decision, why did I feel like that, why did that event/person affect me in this particular way? To uncover is to remove the many masks we’ve hidden behind so that we can see more clearly the feelings, thoughts, and experiences deep within ourselves.

To discover is to be able to see things in a new light, in a fresh way; to be recharged and re-energized; able to make sense of things. When we stop to reflect and be quiet, we find a sense of motivation, desire, and hope to go on, or to go a different direction. When we stop to reflect, we notice new things about ourselves, others, and the situation/circumstance we’re in. Often times, we miss the chance to notice what God is doing in our life, because we’re too busy to stop.

Have you made time for “the stop that keeps you going”? What are some discoveries that you’ve made about yourself or God lately?

Chronicling Our Lives

A word.
A phrase.
A drawing.
A picture.
A person.
Something that stays with you.

These are some of the examples of journaling. Journaling is not about writing a whole days events down. It’s not a diary. It’s just capturing a one or two a few things that remains with you for a particular day/moment. It can come in many forms

We always ask the questions like ‘what has God been up to in my life?’ or ‘has God been working in my life?’ Do you know that the Bible tells us that we are God’s poimea? Ephesians 2:10 says that we are His workmanship (poiema)… He is at work at all times in our lives, but do we notice it?

Come my friends, start jotting something down. Start capturing moments. Start taking snapshots of what’s going on in your life. Start ‘chronicling’ what’s been happening. We are His poimea and He is at work. A chronicle captures all the necessary moments in one's life. By journaling, we are able to capture and chronicle what are the happenings in our lives, and we may come to realize the things that God may be up to in our lives. After all, we are His poiema, His masterpiece. He IS at work in HIS masterpieces, US.

Are you able to see what He is up to in your life? Grab your materials. Start chronicling. Do u want to allow God's poiema to unfold for you to see? Then it's never too late to start.