Christmas time......time to think

Looking at Helena, I am amazed that time has passsed so quickly. It is always time for me to reflect on last few months of the year what my personal journey with God has been like. Through prayers with him, I have witnessed some dramatic changes in people surrounding my life, Helena, Emma, Jasmine, and some of my patients whom I felt so deeply for them.

To some of my patients, through life circumstances not within their humanly control, some of them have gone through somewhat tormenting traumatic experiences which has culminated into all sorts of miseries. I was made, on a few occasions, to feel as totally helpless as them. The social welfare structure is always riddled with flaws that cannot be helped. This left these people totally unsupported. Some of them just determine to live their lives the way they are and just came to see me to have a good moan and grumble. To someone who see them from a totally fresh perspective, the solutions can sometimes be so very obvious: what don't they sort themselves out? What did they ruin their lives like this? Why did they abandon, reject or refuse allhelp to get better? etcetc.Why Why Why? It is not surprising that some of us are going to blame God for letting the whole thing called misery and suffering to happen at all....... forgetting the fact that the very first step to salvation for them is for them to love trust in God and go!

Yet this fundamental abilities to love and trust are lacking in these individuals and hence they totally isolate themselves in the dark box of solitude. To suggest them to try to love and trust again can be quite challenging. It really takes quite a sensitive approach to coach them into at least try doing that in a small minute scale, for example, trying to love and trust their very own self. This sometimes can be a loud awakening call as a thunder through a sky to their ears. What they do in response, not uncommonly is to shut their ears and refuse to hear the advise........Well, what else can I do apart from praying to God for them??

I remember a story I read from a newspaper clipping given by my father:

A lucky man went to meet God who decided to take him to two totally similar rooms. Each of the room has six people surrounding a big pot of very delicious smelling soup witha very long spoon. In one room which is labelled as Hell, the six people looked so unhappy, thirsty and hungry as they cannot manage to feed the soup by themselves as they cannot reach the long spoon to their mouth. Hence they were tortured by this big pot of soup and suffer the eternity of hunger s and temptations.

While when the man was then led to enter the other room labelled as Heaven, every man in the room, looked so happy content and grateful for the delicious soup that they can have from the never empty pot of delicious soup. The man who witnessed this started to wonder why but not long before he observed a difference. The men in the room actually used the long spoon to feed the delicious soup to the man opposite him. By serving others and giving himself first, he has fed the other and the other has done the same back to him. As a result of act of love and grace, every one in that room was well fed and happy.

After seeing this scene, the man was speechless all the way back to earth.

Something for you to ponder, my brothers and sisiters.