About Christianity

'i don't understand. i don't understand at all. i don't know why i am doing all these.'

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sometimes, inevitably, we will hear such things, or perhaps say such things. and after saying such things, the person usually always comes up with his or her own answer.

'because it is neccessary.'

that's the answer. it doesn't feel right. there is nothing to be happy about. but still we do the things we need to do.

as long as we are humans, there are times when we felt trapped in a certain kind of situation, be it one or more. a middle-aged man trapped in a job which he cannot quit because he has a family to support. a student studying something he does not like, because that path he takes will give him many more opportunities in the future. a soldier in a war zone killing people, despite not liking it but for the sake of protecting his own land had no other choice.

there are many more examples. i am sure, that you are in one of the many examples, be it now or last time. as long as you are reading this, i take it as you are at least a teenager. not that i am discriminating against children. just that, children usually do not have the patience to do things like reading a boring blog like mine.

as humans, naturally we will try to find a way out. even if we do not like it, everyday we drag our feet walking this path that we had chosen, be it willingly or not. because we need to walk that path. so what do people usually do? sometimes they try to find joy in it, which is theoretically impossible for you, because if you could have done that, you would not be feeling this way. sometimes we complain. they say voicing out your unhappy thoughts help. or maybe you try to escape.

what do i do? i think i choose to escape. to where? maybe to the world of stories. as you know, i love to write and to read stories. as all those who are like me, you all know stories usually provide a reality that we can never get. it is a place for us to dream and to get detached from this reality that we usually felt so burdened of. i think, this kind of escape is kind of addictive. i find myself ditching my work to read stories, to read manga or to watch anime.

of course, this is a bad example. all humans need a place to destress. but doing it too much like me will end up neglecting the work. for example i have a 9 day school holiday. and today is the 8th day. i just found myself successfully wasting 8 days of my precious youth doing nothing but the following: read stories, watch anime, write stories.

as a result i have neglected my work. i don't even know what i am doing here blogging. i feel a need to waste time. waste my precious youth away. then when the time comes i will be desperate and try to bring myself back to where i should be in this real life.

as a christian, what should i do? i remember my pastor said something about that some time ago. but being a person with not very good memory, i had totally forgotten about it. so let me say it in my own way, in my own opinion. and as usual, you decide for yourself whether i am right or not.

you know, i think, for all our situations, God put us there. He has a purpose for us. so, if we are there, i think, we should do our best, and do what we should do. talk is easy, i know. i myself don't do it. instead of solving the pile of number theory questions i have on my table i am here blogging about wasting my life away.

anyway, we have to know why God wants us there. if you don't know, then you should pray. my experiences tell me if you pray long enough, sincerely enough, He will definitely answer you. and if you know why you are there, then try to complete what you have to do. maybe it is something insignificant as doing a boring job or studying all the funny math equations, but if this is what you should do, then we have to do it well. (i myself don't do it. haix.)

if you don't know, then you have to see your path step by step. the chinese have a saying which goes '船到橋頭自然直'. basically it means that when the time comes, things will sort out by itself. i certainly wish for that to happen. if i don't study, i wish a miracle will fall from the sky and grant me a pass or maybe a distinction for my exams. if i don't work, i hope at the end of the month my bank account will miraculously by the amount of my monthly (or even better, annual) pay.

i think, maybe in christianity, it just translates to: 'if you follow God, He will take care of you. and when the time comes, He will provide a way.' Yeapx, that's what i think it is. of course, you have to follow Him. sometimes we all feel so trapped in a situation. but all we need to do is to just follow God, and trust in Him. that is what it means to be a christian, i guess. if we cannot even believe in our God, i guess there is no one else we can rely on.

so, today when you read this, if you felt trapped, turn to God and seek His guidance. i don't know how it will turn out. but if you follow Him faithfully, when the time comes, it will work out according to His plan.

of course, as usual i am talking from the point of a normal human with normal problems. if your problems are so big that nobody else could understand, so painful that you think there is no God, then maybe my post is just a pile of useless words jumbled up together. but you know, if you are like that, i can only do 2 things for you. the first: to ask you to pray to God. the second: to pray for you. that's all i can do. afterall, a normal human can never understand the sufferings of a more-than-normal pain. but still, i hope you get the answer you are looking for.

now, should i do more integration or should i continue to write my story? for now, let me waste a few more minutes by checking through this blog one more time for any errors.

erm... no. this is not the song by rihanna. ok it is lame. =.=

so it was raining, and i had to go out of the house. i hate rain. it makes the floor wet and slippery. it makes going out difficult. it makes me wet. it makes my stuffs wet. and if i am wearing shoes and socks, my feet get wet. and everything goes so slowly. people walk so slowly. the traffic moves so slowly. it is to me, very irritating and frustrating.

i hate to use an umbrella. it is troublesome. so whenever possible, unless absolutely neccessary, i will not use an umbrella. but wherever i go, i will carry one with me. i am a firm believer of: i would have something i don't need rather than need something and don't have it. now isn't that familiar? yea. the girl from AVP said it. hahax. sue me for plagarism.

riddle: what am i going to say in this post?

answer: another civics and moral education lesson.

flame me for being one who keep preaching what i don't do. just don't do it on my blog. free speech is prohibited.

ok. i sidetracked enough. randomed enough.

sometimes we treat God like an umbrella instead of our Lord. as christians, we should always treat God as our Lord. well, technically if you are not a christian you should do that too. but many christians treat God as an umbrella instead. why do i say that?

when everything goes well, ie the sun is shining and there is no rain, we put God behind us, like an umbrella inside our bag, and forgot all about Him. why? because He is not needed, well, that was what we think. or that was at least how we acted. but when there is rain, ie when there is trouble, we pray and ask for help, just like how we remember we have an umbrella.

in actual fact we are supposed to put God as priority. even when there is no rain, we should not forget about Him. there are times when i too wished that i do not need to follow rules, and do what i want. and of course many times i did what i wanted instead of doing the right thing. i guess that is like treating Him as an umbrella. because when things go wrong, we suddenly remember there is a God who can control all things. that, in a way, is treating Him like a genie.

of course, i have no right to scold people or something like that, because i am guilty myself. but it does not mean i cannot say what i think, and try to let those who read this have a new perspective. i have said what i wanted to say. God is our Lord, not our umbrella. whether there is rain or shine, the top place should always be for Him. talk is easy, because everyone knows how to talk. but it doesn't mean you cannot try. of course sometimes we pass sometimes we fail. but at least, it is better than not bothering to try. i failed many times too.

i guess, if you really need a reason, i shall give you one. you have 2 options: enjoy now on earth and burn in hell for all eternity or suffer now and enjoy in heaven for all eternity. when you die, the game is set. and you either smile forever or scream forever. at least, if you suffer here now, you won't need to scream.

so i said i got a camera in my last post. maybe i should continue a bit more. the reason why i bought a camera was to take pictures, of course. pictures of who? me and my friends. i have 3 best friends, and after seeing them going off one by one to overseas, some may not come back anymore except for visiting, i realized that i did not really have pictures with them. why? we were together since i was 13, and had seen each other pretty often, so there was no need.

after they went off, i guess it would be good to buy a camera and start taking pictures with my friends. no, i am not a cam-whore. even if my friends were staying put in the country, it would still be good. maybe 10 years later, i can look back and remember the things i did with my friends. although the human memory is good, the pictures would still remind me of the things i would have otherwise forgotten. friendship is a precious thing.

what about a diary? i used to keep one, but not now. anyway, a dairy would also remind us of the things we do, the significant events of our lives. someone told me before to keep a diary about my walk with Christ. i thought i understood why. let me give a few reasons i thought up myself and you see if it makes senses. of course The Holy Bible did not say we have to keep a diary, but i guess it would help.

a diary about your walk with the Lord will record events, major or minor. or you may record lessons learnt from a particular event. sometimes, years into our walk in the faith, we might make mistakes that an immature christian would make, and that would be when we need to go back and see what had happened to us the last time we did the same thing. we cannot possibly remember every little thing, but we would remember the major things. going back, we could go back to our past to view our mistakes and try to correct our present sin before God starts thinking we need another lesson.

or sometimes, we knew christians who just started the walk. i guess every christian would go through more or less the same thing. sometimes mature christians forgot how it felt like to be an immature christian, and we talked in ways the immature christians would not understand. of course i am not saying i am a mature christian. going back, we could see how we thought back then, and use a 'language' to speak to them and encourage them in a way which is more familiar to them rather than a 'language' that they would understand but not be familar to them.

thirdly, it is our life. why would you want to take photos and keep a diary about your personal life? because it records events about people important to you. because you would like to treasure your memory with your friends. is not God more important? if you would keep a diary and photos with of your friends who are important, would you not keep a diary about God?

actually, i myself did not keep a diary. i always do not do what i preach. oh wells, think if my reasons for keeping a diary about your walk with God makes sense.

if you have lived for a certain number of years, you will have things that you regret. generally regret is separated into 2 categories, regret that you did something, or regret you did not do anything. a regret, i would take it as something which had already happened and that which cannot be turned back. example, hurting a person, not studying hard, commit a crime, did not appreciate someone.

me too, have my own regrets. i have already told myself that i will not do things that will make me regret. of course that is a near impossible achievement. well maybe at least i can try. what regrets do i have? quite a few. i made stupid mistakes, and did stupid things. well things a usual teenager would do. i was an idiot last time. i guess everybody is at one point of time or another.

luckily, many of our regrets are quite 'little'. as in, nobody really died, there are no long-term effects that will result in a dramatic turnover of our life for most of us. yes, it did affect us, maybe for a short while, maybe for a long while, maybe forever. maybe it is a big impact. but most of it, well i take it as decisions made up to the point of age 21, since i am 21 this year, most of it do not have that big of an impact to completely change us. meaning? life goes on, maybe with a few hurts here and there. no big deal. i dealt with it, at the expense of many sleepless nights and many moody days.

so i can say our regrets up to age 21 for most of us do not significantly affect us once a few years passed by. maybe we became more mellow, more cheerful, more able to hide and handle pain, whatever. everyone got changed, a little i guess. but there is another kind of regret that will happen to many of us, a regret that will affect us forever, one that we can never get over with, and that will happen when we die, or after we die. i'm sure you guessed it. this is a christian blog, you should know what to expect.

yes, if we end up in hell, there will be regret forever. reason 1, eternal pain and suffering. not 1 year, 10 years, 100 years, 1000 years. forever. no end to time. no limit. imagine being burn by fire forever. no rest, no peace, no relief. regret forever. what can we do then? nothing. you are dead, and you are gone, if you end up in hell. i dont know if you believe in the concept of hell. i do not have proof. but religion is about faith. i have not seen hell, not felt it, not heard it. but i believe it. i believe it exist and believe that i am not insane enough to want to go there.

i dont want to regret. do you? if you dont, be a good christian. as in, follow the way of Christ Jesus. do what He tell you to. repent of your sins, every single one of them. if you are not a christian, be a christian. i know it is weird to just join any religion. try to talk to your christian friends about it. dont regret forever because of the few years you spend here. instead, celebrate forever because of the life you spend here. it is only a short while. dont regret.