About Christianity

before his friend turned into sand, his friend asked him, 'so, what is your wish?'

'i just don't want to lose all these things. i only want, to take back all the happy memories of the past.'

and as he said that, all that was important to him turned into sand and disappeared.

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this teenage boy, in order to turn the current reality into something like the past, challenged 'god'. his past was that of a happy one, with friends around him, and had little troubles compared to his current situation. but as always, reality is not always beautiful. his important friends were gone, and all he had was a nightmarish reality and loneliness. he did all he could to go back to the past, to revert things back to the previous state. in the end, he challenged 'god'.

how many of us are like that? well, not to the extreme of challenging God. how many of us are stuck in the past, unable to look forwards?

life is beautiful sometimes, and ugly sometimes. if there is happiness, there is sadness. if there are ups, there are downs. success and failure. stress and relief. everyone experience the same thing - joy, grief, victory, loss..etc.

maybe, at your current stage of life, everything looks so bad. so bad you want to despair. so bad, like that boy, you think it is a nightmare. there is nothing in front for you to look forward to. whatever you do, you keep failing. and maybe, finally, you give up hope, and dare not hope anymore.

and when that happens, it is human tendency to look back to the past. to the past when everything was so beautiful. there are many reasons why we do that. maybe it is the only source of strength that lets us go on. maybe we want to go back to that state. maybe, just naturally, as if addicted by drugs, we cannot help but go back to the past where our memories are.

but, i thought, if we cannot let go of the past, we cannot move forwards. if we cannot let go of the past, we cannot face the reality now. in a way, it is like drugs. for a short moment, we thought it would help us go on. but in the long term, it actually makes us despair even more.

why do we still hold on to that past? because, it is very hard to let go. because, the reality we are facing now is too hard for us to bear.

sometimes i am like that too. even though i know i cannot keep on doing this anymore. like that boy, if we continue to do this, if we cannot let go of the past, whether by despair or by desperate attempts to return things to the original state, one day, we are going to lose every single thing important to us.

because, the past can never return to us. that is why, it is called the past.

we need to let go of the past. but letting go does not mean you have to forget them. the past is important. but if we cannot let go, we have no future, and our present is so dark we cannot move on.

talk is easy, right? i thought so. i only know how to talk, so i don't know what to do myself. but i thought, maybe i can introduce you someone who can help you. maybe, i thought, i would introduce you to my God.

if one day, or now, you find your present too dark to go on, your future too uncertain to move forwards, why not ask for help from my God? He knows the way, the past, the present, and the future. if the road is too dark, ask Him to light it up for you. if the future is too blur, ask Him to guide you. i cannot promise you the road He leads you will be smooth. but this i can promise you: He won't give you a road too hard for you to walk. this i can promise you: wherever He led you, there He will be with you too.

let go of your past, so your heart won't hurt anymore. so you can turn your head around, face the front and continue walking. i don't know how long you have to walk, but one day, you will be able to see the light. if you really cannot go on anymore, then ask God for help.

of course, as we walk, we sometimes do look back. i think, it is ok. as long as we don't reach out our hands and try to grab it and turn it to our reality. the past can never be the present.

but i think, maybe, from the present, like what the people in stories always do, we can tilt our head sideways a bit, smile and say to our past, 'i am glad i was there once. it really made me very happy.' or maybe, we can tilt our head sideways, smile and say to our friends, 'i am very happy i once walked this road with you.'

it won't be easy. but this, is the key for us to face the present, and to walk towards the future. so, turn back and smile. don't cry because the past is behind you. at least, you have a past you can look back to.

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fans may already know this - Mizuki Nana's dad passed away on 29th october 2008. it is on the news. anyway, my deepest condolences. her blog updates will be irregular for now though. for her blog entry on this issue, j1m0ne had done a translation of it on her website. http://atemonai.com/blog/mizuki-nana-on-her-fathers-passing/

a teenage boy was jumping off the top of the building. and as he fell another person jump out of the building too, to save him. the following conversation was also something i could not forget:

'why did you save me?'

'because if you die, everyone will be very sad.'

'in this city, who would be sad for someone like me, who don't even know his real name?'

'i will be sad for you, is that not enough?'

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is that familiar? again, this is taken from a story. one reason i love stories other than the fact it provides an escape to the reality we live in, is that authors, they really know how to write beautiful stories sometimes. which is also one of my goals, to write a beautiful story.

for the benefit to those who did not know about this particular story, the person who jumped out of the building to save that boy was his king. the king had jumped out to save his own man.

in our lives, we will make friends. some are temporary, some are longer. some are good friends. some are not.

there are those of us who make many friends. be it your looks, talents, characters etc, you have made friends wherever you go. some of us don't. wherever we go, people don't like us.

if there is a reason why you are an outcast, most probably the reason lies with you. the problem lying with you does not mean you are wrong. maybe the whole group is wrong. maybe you are wrong. well i am not here to talk about that. but what i can say is, most probably you will need to correct yourself to fit in. but if the group you are trying to fit in is up to no good, i suggest you remain an outcast.

because i don't like to talk to strangers, i made friends slower than most people. sometimes it happens that people all have friends and formed their own cliques, of course i am still alone. well i asked for it.

anyway, if you are alone, sometimes you looked at other people and you envy them. i guess friends are like shoes. you walk on the road you called life, or the chessboard you called life (which is of course not true, look at the post titled 'micromouse'. i explained that in detail), and sometimes it is hard to walk. with shoes, walking is easier. sometimes you feel you can keep on walking. without shoes, you get blisters, it is painful. it is hard and painful to walk, but it is not impossible to walk.

to those of you who don't have friends, be it because of others' prejudice or your own fault (at least correct it if you know it is your own fault), we sometimes imagine things. maybe if we die today, how many of the people we know (with the exception of our family) will cry for us? how many will be sad for us?

even if the whole world does not know you, even if the whole world does not feel sad for you, even if the whole world could do without you (erm for this it is almost true for everyone?), there is one who would feel sad for us. you guessed it. this is a christian blog. no matter how the topic spins, it always comes back to the same point.

yeapx, Jesus, our Lord, our King, our Friend will be sad for us. maybe i shall quote a Bible verse (first time i do that in this blog!). Isaiah 63:9: In all their distress he too was distressed, and the angel of his presence saved them. In his love and mercy he redeemed them; he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old.

Like the story, we have a King who feels sad for us, who cares for us. our King is not a King who rules over us like slaves. our King knows us. maybe if you think you have no friend in this world, always remember you still have a Friend who knows everything about you. even if you have a whole lot of friends to make people jealous, there are things which we don't tell them. we all have a side we don't want people to know.

our Friend, He knows everything, whether you tell Him or not. maybe one day when you are sad, you can confide in Him, since He already knows everything and there is nothing you can hide from Him. lying would be pointless anyway, and i cannot imagine lying to God. maybe He would answer you during your confiding, or maybe He would choose to listen to you first. either way, He is always there for you. you just need to call Him. of course He is not your genie.

to those who don't have friends, to those who are lonely, to those who will be alone in the future, maybe life would be really hard to walk. really really hard. maybe one day we will be really sad. sad to the point where we don't wish to live. feeling pain to the point we wish we could give up anything to be free from it. i thought, if at that point, my King said to me, 'I will be sad for you, is that not enough?', i thought, i might be able to go on. He is not a King who only knows how to talk, He will provide a way out. please don't hope that you will be declared innocent if you murder a person.

when we walk the road we called life, it is great to have friends. if however, we don't have, just do remember you have a Friend who is your King. i don't know about you, but if it is me, i think it is more than enough when He feels sad for me. the Bible already said, He do feel sad for you.

2 days ago, on 14 july 2008, i celebrated my 21st birthday. as many of us know, the 21st birthday is usually celebrated with quite a bit of noise. people invite others to parties and have fun. why? it is a step for us as we move from teenage to adulthood. finally, we are adults.

this is how i spent my 21st birthday. in the morning, i dragged myself out of bed as i go to work. nobody in the office knew it was my birthday, because i did not tell them. i don't really have a habit of telling people my birthday unless they specifically ask for it. after work, in the evening, i went home with my friends, 2 of them. 1 of them gave me a present when we were alone. she knew my birthday. well, we were quite close at one point of time, so i told her about it a few years back. she could still remember it though. others would have forgotten it. no, she did not depend on friendster or all the nonsense to know it was my birthday.

at home, my family celebrated for it. it was a simple affair. my sisters bought a cake, sang a birthday song, while my dad took a picture. after that we ate the cake and that was the end. of course, throughout the day, my friends sent me messages (sms) to wish me a happy 21st birthday.

some of you might think, like one of my sisters, that it is quite sad or pathetic to celebrate my birthday like that, especially since it is the 21st birthday. not much of a celebration, and still went to work. do you think so too? somehow or another, i don't really think it is sad. because, at least i have friends who wished me a happy birthday, a family who celebrated for me.

there were many others who never had a chance to celebrate their birthdays. some of them did not know their age, or when they were born. some of them do not have friends. some of them do not have a family. some of them are starving. some of them are met with disasters. there are many others out there suffering. actually, to be able to pass through my birthday like a normal day, it may too, be considered a blessing.

some time back, i learnt to appreciate the things i have, and to treasure more the things i have. we may not have everything. we may not have what others have. we may wished to be like them, or not. but as we think, we should also count our blessings. because there are many others out there, who would give up a lot of things, just to be like you.

treasure what you have.

roughly 9 or 10 years ago, when i was a little kid, i made a friend. she was one year younger than me. we were from different schools, we had met at the playground below my house. i was living in a high rise building... well not actually high rise, 8 storeys only. she lived in another block of flats. below and near our block of flats was a playground. we went there to play often. badminton, catching, blind mice, whatever. games usually kids would play. we were in primary school, or what the americans would call a elementary school.

so we played. because i was a person with no life, i looked forward each day that i can go down to play. you know kids, we can never stay at home. my parents were strict. i dont want to stay at home. sometimes they banned me from going down. but when i did go down, i would play with her. it was fun. maybe because she was the only friend i had outside of school and sunday school.

so we played. we continued that way till secondary school, or what you would call a high school. gradually more people join us. life became better, for a while. there were boys and girls. we became really good friends. at least, i treated her as my good friend, maybe my best friend. during teenage, it was a time when normal girls and normal boys started having feelings for the opposite sex. me too. maybe she too.

ok i will skip the details. but we ended up having a very strained relationship. she wanted to severe all ties with me. it was no fun at all. i remembered it was one of the most painful period of my life. maybe i will sound like a hypocrite, but i really did tried to repair our friendship with her. no use. she refused. she still had me on msn, me too. but we didnt really talk. when i talked to her, she refused to answer. and then she blocked me. i kept her in my list, as a memory of my dear friend. i moved house. i have no idea what had happened to her then, dont know what happened to the group of friends. but i remembered hating someone. that time, i had thought it was gone, that she had blocked and deleted me on msn.

i gave up. i had tried for around 1 year plus. maybe a year and a half. i was too tired. i had tried my best. after i moved house, i did still think about her. i still had her in my msn list, the very top. it was just a memory. who knows, one day, years later, i saw her name appearing online on my msn list. i did not receive a request to add her on my msn, which means all these years she only blocked me and not delete me. we talked for a while.

the thing is, after so long, after such a strained relationship, we can only get past the formalities such as how do you do. we used to talk a lot, talk about everything and anything. we joked a lot. we teased each other. but now, we have problems talking. now and then, me or her would try to communicate with each other. but it was always like this, after a while, it became a Q&A session. for some reason, we cannot talk normally anymore. even though she had finally agreed to make peace, the hurt was still too great. i had given up hating the person whom i thought had caused my treasured and precious friendship to break down. i had hated because maybe i can say it is not my fault. maybe i dont want to admit i did something wrong, that i screwed up somewhere. and then, i found it very tiring to keep hating a person. i had no choice, i had to accept the result of it is the combined mistake of all of us.

so now what? i have no idea. i only know, our friendship is so broken it is almost impossible to repair. i heard on tv, and saw in movies, that when friends quarrel, they became better friends after they patch. why then, is mine so different? instead of being stronger than before, it was so much weaker. it is as if both of us are trying to hold on to that line connecting both of us. i can sense the awkwardness. i did not know what to say to her, and i guess the same for her too. i got my wish, that my dear friend restored the bond, but why is it that weak? what can i do? i have no idea. i already tried my best. maybe she too. i dont know.

what would i give to go back to the past? many things. friendship (relationship) is one of the top priorities i have set in my life. the bond is priceless. and yet, this is one of the biggest regret in my life. how long have we known each other now? 10 years maybe. or 9 years. isnt it sad?

do you have a similar situation? maybe you have. what can you do? i have no idea. i myself if i know what to do this blog post will be 'my restored friendship' instead of 'my broken friendship'. i only have one way out, that is to pray. years ago, when i gave up, i had stopped praying for the restoration. years later, our friendship got restored. maybe not the way i want it. but it did. God did answered my prayers. but this few years, i had not prayed for our relationship to go back to as it were. i dont know why i didnt do it. but i know, if i want it to happen, i have to pray. i had been praying for her all these years, but not for the strengthening of our bond. am i scared of something? maybe not. i just didnt think of it. maybe, if you have an experience similar to me, you can try praying. the answer may come many years later, but i guess it will come through. afterall, God do want us to restore our relationship. maybe the time is not right. pray, will you?

i guess, maybe starting from today, i will pray. and years later i will look back and not regret i prayed, just like how 6 years ago, i did not regret that i prayed for our bond to connect back.