Walking In Love

At the start of this year, I felt God gave me a verse that was to be my focus for the whole year:

Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. Ephesians 5:1 - 2

Over the year, God has given me opportunities to practice what it means to walk in love, towards many different people. During DTS, I was challenged to walk in love towards my fellow staff, my students, and later, towards my outreach team mates. On outreach, I practiced walking in love towards slum dwellers, the underprivileged, foreigners, people of other belief systems and mindsets. 

Now I am learning a new type of love: to love privileged, spoilt ‘westerners’

And my own heart is being revealed.

It’s a reverse kind of pride to find it easy to love the poor, and harder to love the ‘rich’ of society. 

But God is teaching me that walking in love includes ALL people, regardless of their background or social status. 

It’s making me question who are the ‘unlovable’ to me? And what makes them so ‘unlovable’? What is in my own heart? 

Rest

I just spent the past two and a half days in bed, sick with a ‘flu or something like it.

That is quite enough time to think about my disobedience to God. 

On Monday, we had a DTS Staff Meeting at the subject of ‘tiredness’ came up. One of our foreign staff asked us ‘Singaporeans’ why it is, that every time he asks any of us how we are, we always reply, ‘busy’ or ‘tired’. 

It was a good questions.

I commented that I have noticed that when I am away from Singapore, my head and heart pace is slower somehow. But I don’t know what to do about it, how to fix it...

That’s a little bit of a lie...

During my DTS, I used to have a coffee date with God. I made a weekly habit of it. I would get dressed up for God, take my journal, a good book and head out somewhere, intentionally just to be with God.

For quite some time now, maybe even six months, God has been reminding me of those times and asking for me to start coffee dating him again. But I’ve been too ‘busy’...

How sad.

I was talking to my Mum about the importance of doing things that nurture us. Every week. At least. 

Which brings me back to the DTS Staff Meeting. One of the ‘elders’ amongst us said, ‘it’s a sin to not rest when we need to.’

It’s also a sin for me to not obey what God asked of me.

And the consequences of my not resting was for the past two-and-a-half days...

I love that God commands us to rest. To be still and know that he is God.