Friday 2 May 2014

Choosing Contentment

But I focus on this one thing: forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead. - Philippians 3:13
Life is lived here and now. Often we already have what we need, yet we look right past it hoping for something else to come our way.
If I only had more money...
If I could own a house...
If I only had a bigger house, a better job, a nicer car...
If, if, if...
When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us. - Alexander Graham Bell
Our wonderful country has afforded many of us exceptional opportunities to achieve and acquire many things. Yet we constantly hear stories of people who are extremely accomplished professionally and have vast riches or opportunities but are still incredibly unhappy. How can that be?
A common misconception among humanity is that riches will bring happiness.
It’s only a two-letter word, but that little word - if - stalls our growth and holds us back. When we “if” our lives away, we are giving away our power.
We create a reason, an excuse, for why we aren’t happy, fulfilled, and enriched by what we have today (and we have so much compared to most of the world). When King Solomon played this very game, he acquired everything under the sun and finally concluded that all of it “was all so meaningless - like chasing the wind” (Ecclesiastes 2:11). What could be less fulfilling than wind?
Countless individuals faithfully spend part of their paychecks each week trying to win the lottery. They’re looking for that ticket that will provide for a totally carefree, happy life. Yet how many times do these big lottery winners appear in the local paper a year or two later saying how they lost their house, their spouse, and their friends and that their life was ruined by that “win”? “If only I hadn’t won the lottery!”
When we have an iffy perspective on life, we choose to ride down a road filled with stop signs rather than enjoying our present. You are stopped and can’t move forward when “if only” starts your day.
Choose to start living in the present, embracing a spirit of gratitude, and you will suddenly realize that the signs around you are all proclaiming, “Go!”
True contentment is a real, even an active, virtue - not only affirmative but creative. It is the power of getting out of any situation all there is in it. - G. K. Chesterton
God, you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in you. - Saint Augustine
by David Zerfoss from Stress Less and Enjoy Each Day

Monday 14 April 2014

We are Sheep

When [Jesus] saw the crowds, He had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. - Matthew 9:36
The word crowd is used more than one hundred times in the Gospels. Crowds frequently surrounded Jesus. Floyd McClung, the international director of All Nations, a church planting and leadership training network, wrote:
[Jesus] was just as intentional about reaching the crowds as He was individuals, but with distinctly different approaches... Jesus saw interaction with the crowds as a way of planting seeds in people’s hearts (Luke 8:4-18), a way of arousing spiritual interest, and a way of finding disciples to be taught. He was looking for those who were hungry for more, so He could invest His time wisely with them.
Looking at the Crowds, Jesus saw that the challenges people faced varied. Even now, he sees that you and I, and also the Crowds among which we find ourselves, struggle with the fact that we have
  • an enemy (thus, we’re “harassed”);
  • a hopelessness (thus, we’re “helpless”); and
  • a lonely lostness (thus, we’re “like sheep without a shepherd”)
Characteristics of Sheep
Sheep generally run in flocks, in groups. This is where Christ often finds us first, among the Crowds. Remember, the Crowds represent those who follow Jesus to the places of watching and listening.The Crowds often surrounded Jesus. This experience for Jesus never smacked of a celebrity with his fans; rather he was a Shepherd with his sheep.
The shepherdess who visited our youth group gave us insights into sheep and their behavior. Hearing these was an eye-opener for me. Let’s just say, I could identify. Christ also sees these tendencies within you and me.
Sheep Have No Real Sense of Direction
We know from the Gospels that Christ came to earth to seek and to save the lost (Luke 19:10).
Sheep have a propensity for getting lost.
Knowing Christ and growing closer to Him begins with a sense of need. For the earliest followers of Jesus who heard about Him and made their way into the Crowds, their focal point at this place was their questions. But because of the vast multitudes, they did not have the opportunity to ask Jesus. We can only imagine the questions they must have asked themselves:
Sheep Are Quite Helpless Against Predators
Christ told us, “The thief [Satan] comes only to steal and kill and destroy” (John 10:10). When you sense an enemy trying to diminish or harm you, Jesus sees your need and can rescue and protect you.
Sheep Left Alone Will Actually Eat Themselves into a Lost Place
Even in the Old Testament, Isaiah said, “We all, like sheep, have gone astray” (Isaiah 53:6).
Our default mode tends to find us wandering to places that hurt more than help us.
Sheep Are Weak
And often, so are we. Yet the apostle Paul took time in 2 Corinthians to talk about our weaknesses and how even they can make a place for Christ’s strength to be revealed (check out 2 Corinthians 12 for strong points on weakness).
Sheep Get Dirty Easily
Everything seems to stick to their wool, and sheep do not clean or groom themselves. Our lives and souls can get quickly and easily soiled in today’s world. We often struggle to find a lasting sense of holiness and wholeness on our own. We really do need a shepherd to clean us up.
Sheep Are Gregarious, Social Creatures That Do Better in Numbers
We all do better in community than we do alone. We are created for community. We are formed for friendship. Isolation and loneliness tend to wither our souls; community helps grow them.
Sheep Require More Care than Any Other Livestock
They are time-intensive animals to raise, and they require much from their caretakers. So do we. Just ask your pastor (shepherd) or your parent.
Sheep Are Timid and Easily Panicked
They stampede easily and are prey to mob reactions. Is it any wonder Jesus so often said to His followers, “Fear not”?
Pathos
The Bible’s statement that Jesus was “moved with compassion” is a deep expression of soul, one full of pathos, passion, and heart. According to The Message, “His heart broke.”
Since we are “harassed” by an enemy, Jesus alone can overcome Satan’s power in our lives.
Since we are “helpless,” Christ alone is our “ever-present help in trouble” (Psalm 46:1).
Since we are “like sheep without a shepherd,” Jesus alone is the Shepherd who “lays down his life for the sheep” (John 10:11).
Jesus sees the challenges, struggles, hurts, and pains of our sheep-ness and sheepishness.
One reason God sent His Son to earth was to make sure we would know just how He, God the Father, feels about us and just how He sees us. He is moved by the needs of your life. He sees you that way. No matter what challenge you face, you are not alone. When it comes to you and me, Jesus has a unique POV. He sees Crowds in a unique way, like “sheep without a shepherd.” And isn’t that the only way a Good Shepherd ever would?
Remember... in the Crowds, we discover how much we need a Shepherd.

Robert Crosby from The One Jesus Loves

Sunday 30 March 2014

God's Not Dead

A generation ago, C. S. Lewis composed a set of lectures that were broadcast over the BBC and were transcribed and published as Mere Christianity. Formerly an atheist, Lewis realized that he had to ignore too much evidence to maintain his unbelief:
If you are an atheist you do have to believe that the main point in all the religions of the whole world is simply one huge mistake. If you are a Christian, you are free to think that all those religions, even the queerest one, contain at least some hint of the truth. When I was an atheist I had to try to persuade myself that most of the human race have always been wrong about the question that mattered to them most. — C.S. Lewis
The arguments atheists use against God quickly disappear like a mirage when they are answered by learned believers such as Lewis. Atheists claim that the universe isn’t what you would expect if a supernatural God existed. All this death and suffering, they say, are plain evidence that a loving, intelligent God could not be behind it all. The truth is that God has created a world where free moral agents are able to have real choices to do good or evil.
If God had created a world without that fundamental choice and option to do evil, then we wouldn’t be having this discussion. God made a world where choices are real and humanity is affected by the choices of other humans. Drunk drivers kill innocent people. Some murder and steal from their fellow men. Though God gave clear commandments to humanity, we have for the most part ignored these directives. The mess that results is not God’s fault. It’s ours.
We are called to follow God and love Him with all our hearts and minds. This means we have to think and investigate. Truth is another word for reality. When something is true, it’s true everywhere. The multiplication tables are just as true in China as they are in America. Gravity works in Africa the way it does in Asia. The fact that there are moral truths that are true everywhere points to a transcendent morality that we did not invent and from which we cannot escape.
As Creator, God has placed not only natural laws in the earth but also spiritual laws. For instance, lying is wrong everywhere. So is stealing. Cruelty to children is wrong regardless of what culture you’re in or country you’re from. When these laws are broken, people are broken. Not only does violating these spiritual laws separate us from God, but it causes pain in our lives and in the lives of those around us. The big question becomes, what can be done about our condition? When we break these spiritual laws, whom can we call for help? How can we be reconciled to God as well as break free from this cycle of pain and dysfunction?
God's Not Dead-Rice Broocks

Friday 28 March 2014

Fall, Get Up & Try Again

It's fun to watch babies learn to walk. Parents are quick to videotape and count the number of steps their little ones take — until they fall, that is. The little ones, usually determined, get up and try again — and fall again. What do parents do then? They don’t scold, they don’t run away, they don’t duck their heads in shame as their children are learning to walk. Instead, they encourage and cheer each awkward step, and they reach down and set their kids back on their feet when they fall so they can try to walk again.
What is that? Do you call it love? Do you call it patience? Is it healthy parenting? I think it’s a great example of a different perspective, one that’s filled with grace.
This perspective is based in reality. Parents know their toddlers are going to fall. But they also have confidence that their children will eventually learn to walk because the odds say so. The parents learned to walk as toddlers. Big brother and sister eventually learned to walk. The neighbor’s kids did. And most likely the next little one will conquer walking as well.
Now consider this:
Where does our heavenly Father find His perspective as He watches His children — you and me — in our daily walk?
Does He trust in the odds, personal experience, or something far greater?
God’s wisdom about your life can come from many places. Heaven gives Him an unequaled vantage point.
First, He made you. Like an engineer understands a car he or she designed, no one understands your limitations and possibilities better than the God who created you.
Second, God has incomprehensible experience. What type of degree do you earn for helping people of all generations learn to walk through the difficulties and challenges of this world?
Third, God is not surprised by your tomorrows. Nobody else, even the best loving parent, can look into your future and prepare you for what lies ahead and how to overcome it. He knows you’re going to struggle, make mistakes, and fail. But He also knows you’re surrounded by His gifts of forgiveness and grace.
So what can that type of perspective do for you? Well, speaking personally, it keeps me from getting off track. My life seems to be a constant battle of making choices. I want to be a good provider for my family, a loving husband for my wife, an involved parent for my children, and the right example for my congregation. But I constantly deal with obstacles like exhaustion, confusion, selfishness, lack of resources, and ultimately, lack of focus. When I get bogged down with these struggles, I tend to drift off course.
Fall 2002 was one of those extreme periods in my life. I had been swamped with a load of additional health challenges, and I could feel my boat not just drifting but sinking fast.
As a result, this small-town pastor threw himself a big pity party one day as he struggled up the church stairs on crutches, complaining and whining all the way.
With every step I managed to climb, I voiced one more justified complaint to God. I was rehearsing in my mind all the sacrifices I had made and was questioning my lack of reward. It was such a strange moment. As my body rose up the stairwell, my spirit was sinking further into a pit.
When I reached the landing, something happened that helped my spirit join the rest of my body. God spoke.
No, He didn’t send a bolt of lightning to correct my attitude. Instead, I sensed a voice speaking gently into my heart, asking, And what did My Son do for you?
Boy, that’s just like God! With just one small question, He can change your entire perspective. With that one reminder, all the selfishness I was struggling with was replaced by a mountain of gratefulness as I remembered the gift of grace I’d been given.
Some people don’t get to experience grace, though. They’re afraid to turn to God when life gets hard and they make mistakes and fall from their Christian walk. They expect to be ridiculed, condemned, or scolded. They’re trying to avoid the heavenly “I told you so” they anticipate rumbling down from the throne of God.
But that’s not what happens.
I’m not the only one who’s found that God speaks in a still, small, yet comforting voice when I fall. Elijah was a prophet in the Old Testament who thought life had become unfair. He felt like he was alone, without support; he was fed up and he was giving up. His words to God were, “Let me die.” (1 Kings 19:4).
Fortunately for Elijah, God had other plans. The Bible says God came to Elijah. But he didn’t speak to him roughly. He spoke to him in a still, small voice, just like he did for me.
I hope you’ve never gotten to that point where Elijah did, wanting to die, but if you have, know that even in the most desperate moments, God wants to talk to you, and He wants to speak words of direction, words of forgiveness, and words of grace into your life.
When you find yourself in that hard place, bitter and discouraged because you’ve fallen (again), pause for a moment and listen as though God himself were whispering these words into your ear: What did My Son do for you?
If you can accept that Jesus gave His life for you, as He did for me, consider this wonderful question the apostle Paul asks all of us: Why would God stop there? It makes no sense. Why would grace end at the cross? 
The truth is, the cross is the beginning of grace. Accepting that truth gives us that all-important heavenly perspective.
You don’t see this verse stuck on many refrigerator doors or hung on many church walls, but believe me, it’s a verse you need to hide in your heart:
He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all — how will He not also, along with Him, graciously give us all things? — Romans 8:32
Todd Burpo. Heaven Changes Everthing.

Wednesday 5 February 2014

The Speed of Light is Absolute!

I am currently watching a video lessons about theory of relativity, discovered by Albert Einstein.
The lesson is taught by a Professor from Taiwan University, which is recorded and uploaded in Youtube. It consists of 30 lessons (videos), each lesson is around 1 hours plus. 
I try to follow the explanation and take my own note, and repeat the part that I do not understand.
I have just finished the 3rd lesson and my head is quite pening already, because it involves a lot of imagination, mathematics and 'linking' skills. 
The conclusion of the 3rd lesson is the Speed of Light is Absolute!
I was so surprised when this is actually can be proven by Mathematics.

Before Einstein, speed is said to be relative, meaning that the speed of an object is dependent on the speed of the source.
I guess this is true for all the things in the world, except Light.
If a light travel with a velocity of v in let say east direction, assuming that the source of light is a torchlight, if I move the torch light in the direction of the light (means I move in east direction as well) with a velocity of u, will the speed of light be faster?
Before Einstein, it was 'logic' to answer yes, the speed of light will be faster, the new speed of light should be v+u.
However, this was proved to be wrong (by complex mathematical derivation). 
The speed of light is constant, independent of the speed of the light source. 
It was concluded that the Speed of Light is Absolute!
In addition, the speed of light is the maximum speed in the universe, meaning that no speed can actually exceed the speed of light (according to the professor, there is a machine called CERN which can actually accelerate particle to 0.99999999 of the speed of light), but still it cannot overtake the speed of light,

And the most 'weird' thing is that Time is Relative! (I have yet to reach this lesson, below is from what I understand so far)
Meaning that my time and your time are actually not the same. (before Einstein, even the greatest scientist will not doubt that time is absolute, means that my time in place A and your time in place B is the same, and this is also our common sense!) 
However, in reality, The reading of a Time is Relative to the Position. (This is also proven by Einstein's thought experiment and mathematics)
And therefore, space and time actually cannot be separated, hence Einstein named them as 'spacetime'.

I am amazed!
We thought the Light was Relative, but it is actually Absolute!
We thought that Time was Absolute, but it is actually Relative.

I am amazed by how God revealed to us through this amazing finding, through science. (Science do not deny the existence of God, but even more prove to us that God is indeed exist)

God is light (In fact, light is also a creation of God in Genesis chapter 1).
God is absolute. He is and will not be affected by anything, He will not change (constant) forever and ever, regardless of time.

We always like to use our mind to 'think' God, and we tend to put God in Time.
But in reality, Time is also the creation of God.
God is not bound by time, and therefore He will not change as time change.
God is Beyond Time.
Many of the people nowadays like to say something like this: "Hey, some of the teaching in bible are outdated (过时了), they are not applicable to the world today." By saying this, we actually indirectly putting God into time. 

As a Human Being, we cannot use our limited 'logical' mind to 'think' God.
In fact, we cannot even 'think' about God, we know God is all because God revealed Himself to us.
There are too many things that we can't and will not understand about God.
We must admit that we are just a creation, and we will never exceed our Creator.  

Since God is Light, therefore we need to walk in the light, or to be more precise, walk with Light.

We will never know about darkness if there is no Light.
The only problem is, are we willing to accept the Light?

Saturday 25 January 2014

Deflation in the euro zone: Should we worry about deflation?


The risks that deflation engenders are well known. First, by creating expectations that prices will be lower next year it gives consumers incentives to postpone purchases. As a result, aggregate demand declines putting further downward pressure on prices. Second, since private and public debts are fixed nominally, declining prices increase the real burden of the debt. Put differently, as prices decline government and private revenues decline while the service of the debt remains unchanged. This forces the private and public sectors to spend an increasing proportion of revenues to service the debt, forcing them to cut back their spending on goods and services. This in turn increases the intensity of the deflationary process. This is probably the most important negative effect of deflation.

Are these risks today close to becoming a reality in the euro zone? I would think that the first one, the consumption-postponement effect is not yet operative. Prices are still increasing in the euro zone. Only if consumers actually expect prices to decline will it start operating. We are not yet there.

The second effect, the debt-deflation dynamics, however, is already working. It is important to stress that this effect does not crucially depend on inflation being negative. It starts operating when inflation is lower than the rate of inflation that was expected when debt contracts were made. Thus, during the last ten years inflation expectations in the euro zone have been very close to 2%, which was also the average rate of inflation during that period. Current nominal interest rates on long-term bonds reflect the expectation that inflation will be 2% for the next five to ten years.

However, inflation in the euro zone has been declining since early last year and now stands at 0.8%. This disinflation exerts debt-deflation dynamics, which are of the same nature as those analysed by Irving Fisher. The nominal debt increases with the nominal rate of interest (which includes a 2% inflation expectation), but the nominal income in the euro zone increases by only 0.8%. As a result, an increasing proportion of these revenues must be spent on the service of the debt. Less is left over to spend on goods and services.

Thus, the euro zone as a whole already suffers from debt-deflation dynamics. It is not yet catastrophically intense, but surely it should be stopped before it gets worse when inflation turns negative.

These debt-deflation dynamics are now even worse in the countries of the euro zone with the highest debt levels. In Spain, Ireland, Portugal and Greece the rates of inflation are below 0.8%, the euro-zone average. In Greece inflation is negative, creating fully-fledged debt-deflation dynamics.

It is sometimes said that the individual countries’ inflation is of no relevance and that only the average inflation in the euro zone as a whole matters. In this view, the fact that inflation in the highly-indebted countries is below the euro-zone average is a good thing. It is part of a relative price adjustment. The troubled debtor countries’ prices decline relative to the northern euro-zone countries. This will boost their competitiveness and is part of a healthy rebalancing mechanism.

Although theoretically correct, the practical implication of this competitiveness effect is limited. There is today (with the exception of Greece) very little difference in national inflation rates in the euro zone. Germany’s inflation is 1.3% (the highest rate) while inflation in the highly-indebted countries, Ireland, Spain, and Portugal is 0.2 to 0.3% and in Italy 0.7%. Thus the competitiveness effect is extremely weak. What is left over is the debt-deflation dynamics that is doing its destructive work, more so in the indebted countries than elsewhere in the euro zone.

The only institution that can prevent disinflation from turning into deflation is the European Central Bank. But that institution is staying on the sidelines, observing and doing nothing. It is paralysed by internal dissension that prevents it from increasing liquidity in the system, the only sure way to prevent deflation

(Source: http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2014/01/deflation-euro-zone-1)


I have always thought that deflation will be a positive phenomenon. However, after reading this article, I found that it is opposite from what I thought. 
My question is:  what is the balance between these? and how such balance can be achieved?
.
Free Hit Counter