Bits and Pieces

Yesterday's prayer session was very meaningful and invoking. I came away from the meeting with not only St Thomas Aquinas in hand, but also with a greater appreciation of the gospel. Kudos to the people who have planned it out!


Last time, one of my main motivations of going to prayer meets was to socialize and also know God better. Besides making it harder to sleep in group prayer, it added structure and variety to my prayer life. In such meetings, the strong in faith uphold the weak, the fervent inspire the not so fervent and the learned instruct the unlearned, so all the good and weak are mixed up and for the sake of the wheat, hopefully God won't separate them so soon. LOL, anyway, really appreciate all the effort that goes into the preparation for all e meetings.



The passage was about the three wise men visiting the infant Jesus and it always amazes me about the humility of Jesus. Would He not have been happier with a roof over His Head and a pillow to lie on? And then when Jesus grows up, He doesn't eat much either! In the desert, and somewhere in the Bible, he rejects the food the apostles brought Him.


The way our Lord continuously denies Himself seems to defy human logic. But looking beyond that, maybe He's trying to tell us that there is something better than all these things, better than sleeping under a roof, on a pillow and eating good food. Perhaps He was exchanging one joy for another kind, the joy of doing God's work. The wisdom of it all sometimes evades me.



Anyway, Glenn raised up the point that the wise men travelled because they had hoped that they would find the King. We all study because we hope to do well, he said. Then Jeremy added that love is greater than hope and to all things we should add love. That really echoed with my sentiments.



Living in a competitive world, it's easy to become ambitious and totally absorbed in getting the ever elusive A's. We study so hard just to get the grades we want. One day, I got up and looked at the mirror and instantly disliked what I saw. I realized I was becoming a product of a system that encouraged competition and achievers. I was studying to get honour for myself, for my self satisfaction, forgetting my family, even to the extent of rejoicing if others did worse than me. Terrible, terrible, terrible. Where is the love?




So I started to spend time with my family and friends. Besides that, it's about loving yourself too. Gradually the Lord led me to discover that to really love yourself, you need to have a sense of self- worth that is larger than grades. Instead of focusing on the grades, why not focus on learning which is far more important?



The prayer meeting ended with what I thought was a very befitting passage of the day. From the Gospel of St John, Philip invited Nathanael to "come and see" and they stayed with Christ. To all of us who have seen, we should be like the Samaritan woman and tell other people, "come and see" We always glorify the new movie we watched and the food we like by telling everyone about it. We also need to talk about God and get our friends to simply show up at our favourite hangout. As Jesus reveals Himself to them, they will also want to stay with Him


* the power of peer pressure should not be underestimated- winks* I better get my friend to come.