Holding Everything with Open Hands

Dearest Precious Handfuls:

When God hands over to us blessings so beautiful.. such as loved ones, passions and purpose, special moments.. hold tight with full knowledge and acceptance that in the end, none of these gifts truly belong to us. We are stewards of His resources. In His time, God giveth and taketh away. We may become empty for a night, but as long as our palms stay open, God will fill them up in abundance again in the morning.

Oh, someone asked me: why ChestnutLily?

Chestnut in Chinese 栗子 sounds like “li zi”. This is a word play on the homophone “li” in Lily. I write Lily in Chinese as 莉莉, so sometimes I use the pen name 莉子 which in turn sounds like 栗子 to the ear.

Slow progress on preparation for the mission trip.
Past couple of weeks I’ve been engrossed in my current dire, pressing situation (condo repair details, insurance/mortgage/possibly legal dispute). I’ve neither the tedious detailed brain/skills nor enjoy the process involved with financial and legal situations, this being the most difficult season of my life thus far. Praise God for all the gentle encouragements my friends did that cheered me on to keep on fighting. If it’s God’s will, it’s on God’s bill. Everything I own is God’s. Whether insurance reimburses me or the compounded financial loss is forever endured by my own pocket, every cent placed in my hands is made possible by God and can be taken away by God.

Since my last letter:

• Airfare purchased.

• Read Answering the Tough Ones by Dr. David A. DeWitt for evangelism training.

• A couple of biblical workshop topics on my mind I think may be relevant and useful to the Cambodian university students:
  Cyber Security, Human Trafficking Awareness, Church Planting

• I learned in Khmer: អរគុណ. (phonetically “arkoun”)

  • Means “thank you”. I will be using this one a lot everyday.

  • Tip: Copy and paste this word (or any foreign language you wish to learn) in google translate, you can hear the pronunciation. Say it back via microphone.. if your tones are correct, google translate will recognize it!

Personal Prayer Requests:

• Praise that God and I have a long history together.

  • Through conversations with some nonbelievers’ candid sharings about world views, life’s purpose, and observance of the peculiar insights of believers who saw Truth beyond limits of self, I tried to remember what my thought process was when I was spiritually blind to salvation. I am thankful He saved me and opened my eyes to His presence and His work in our daily lives. While I know by His Word that He is our God and has a plan for everyone, I know in my heart He is my God, and His plans are sure, true, and faithful. Pray that I have epistemic empathy towards nonbelievers’ struggles, and that compassion motivates me to pray for the lost to know Christ personally as Lord and Savior.

• Pray I don’t drop my shield of faith.

  • I’ve not outgrown spiritual warfare, no matter how long I’ve believed. I felt pummeled from all sides, especially these past few weeks. No matter how hard I try placing one foot in front of the other, circumstances out of my control that’s impossible to prevent continue to take me by surprise and threaten to make me discouraged and give up. Help me, pray for me to resist the discouragement, to keep learning, to discover how God can use me to bless others and do good works right where I stand, and to trust His ultimate good reigns.
    I recently bumped into a coworker I don’t see often and used the moment to tell him a condensed version of life of Joseph in Genesis being an encouragement for me to keep doing what I’m supposed to do in life despite setbacks and afflictions.

• Pray for a friend’s friend (I shall refer to as Magikarp) I recently challenged to consider possibility that God is real

  • I’ve had 3 conversations with Magikarp this year, he’s friend of a friend, highly educated young professional, nonbeliever/seeker. He claims he doesn’t care if God exist. He believes he didn’t try hard to get anything he’s not supposed to have in life, and it didn’t cost him anything to naturally arrive at where he is in his career. He said it’s impossible for any human to be perfect. Everyone can only speak from their own limited point of view, thus he’s skeptical of Jesus’s claims in the Bible, as those are too arrogant to be made by a man. He’s not sure if one can speak from a peculiar point of view that seems to see the big picture not from one self: is it real or just people drinking the koolaid in a cult.
    I invited him to consider what if people who speaks from a peculiar point of view was from having external help and access to God (that He is real) and acts out of knowledge and ownership from a true purpose and desire that does not originate from a mere human, with the convictions to die for this belief bigger than one self.

    “Take the blue pill (test it for yourself if it’s koolaid or God is actually the true reality) or the red pill (do nothing, change nothing, the existence of God has no influence in your life)?” The friend of Magikarp pointed out it’s a Matrix reference. Magikarp’s blank face go “ohhhhhh”.
    I thought everybody knew that.. or Magikarp is too young to remember. Sigh. I feel old.

A Blurb: Learning to enjoy dancing in the rain instead of waiting for the storm to be over

Life is constantly overcoming a series of challenges. When we were kids, we can’t wait for school year to be over so we can enjoy the summer vacation. When we are adults, we can’t wait to wrap up a project or finalize a business deal so we can take paid time off. Whether it’s self-imposed goals to dealing with unforeseen disasters, it’s easy to wish that our life will finally began after we finish dealing with working on ourselves and surviving through a difficult season.

But what if life is really about living purposefully every moment in the middle of it all? Like working in doing a good deed for a neighbor while on our way facing a difficult confrontation? Or displaying kindness and love to all parties involved while suffering through being unjustly blamed for something bad? Or never give up witnessing for Christ, whether you are at work or in prison? Or sharing a meal with a friend and encourage one another to keep the faith even when there’s no helpful solution for each other’s problems? Or counting our blessings and show gratitude, because there’s so much to be thankful for.

When we focus only on those moments we desperately wish to overcome, our eyes don’t see the bigger picture. Our brain surge into overdrive as the enemy does his best to distract us from God. We longed for the storm to end as we bank our happiness and hope on what we want to do after the rain, when all this time, God can grant us the peace, the joy, the contentment by dancing and lingering in His presence.
What has God placed in your open hands right now?

Through it all my eyes are on You. It is well with my soul.