Lenten Season…

February 21st, 2010 The author

The last Wednesday marked the beginning of lent in the Church’s liturgical calender ; a season where we prepare our hearts and minds for the passion, death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, our Lord and savior. Lent is typically marked by a season of penance, where recall our thoughts and minds of all the misdeeds we have done and we also prepare our hearts to celebrate God’s gift to us (his son and the Resurrection) by offering up sacrifices.

Sacrifices typically can come in all ways, mostly people opt to fast and abstain from meat or food. For me, what I’m doing for lent is quite simple ; I am going to plan to say the Rosary on my knees for the next 40 days.  This exercise will not only help build up my spiritual stamina, but it will also give me that much needed time of prayer. I am also planning to go for daily mass, at least once or twice a week.  This is actually the first time I am making a conscious effort to do something during lent. Usually, lent for me basically means more activity in Church - i.e Way of the Cross. 

So far it has been rewarding. The fact that I make it an effort to say the rosary on my knees helps me focus more on God, and less on earthly things. The pain I get from my legs help me in a small way offer up my sacrifice to Christ. Like I said, this is the first time I am perfoming any sort of mortification  (Don’t get hung up by  THAT word, even a simple fast or abstaining from sugar in your coffee is also considered mortification!) and it has been really good.

Anyway I just hope and pray I can continue this on until Easter :)

Posted in Church, God, Life, me | No Comments »

Post September 27th 2009 - Part I

January 17th, 2010 The author

September 27th 2009. That was my last entry

That’s a long time ago, roughly 100 days or more ago. Yes I am still very much alive and I’ve been tied up with work and..well other things.  In my absence, lots of things have happened,  and so, in order to do justice to my readers, and most importantly to myself, I thought I would highlight the events that have happened over the last 3-4 months

We begin in October 2009….

- My church group had organized a trip to KK, Sabah! Yeahhhh I finally had the chance to go to Sabah for the first time in my life! KK is a nice place, albeit the heat that one has to endure. Reminded me of my boyhood days in Penang, where the sun would just beat down on any pedestrian.

- Work resumed following my short vacation. I had 2 more training sessions to conduct. Thank God the training session for one of them was rescheduled to another date. At least the trainer had some breathing room! Both training sessions went well…. oh wait I think there were 3 training sessions that happened in October. 3 sessions is alot but I guess I managed to pull it off! For one of the training sessions I had to travel up to Kedah ; it was a good experience as I got to eat kampung food by the padi fields.

- October was also the time when I got the news that I would be heading the Sound in the Word Minsitry, a Ministry that is focused in providing content for my church youth group, Lifeline.  It was a welcoming change and something, though I didnt expect to get, was nevertheless a pleasent surprise. I could finally have a stronger say on the curriculum and content development of my youth group.

November 2009

- Work started pilling up. There was yet another training session for November 2009 and this would be the last one for YEAR.  So far all of my training sessions had gone smoothly except for one or two that I had done in Kerteh, oh well can’t blame me,  cuz it was the participants that didn’t show up for the session.  Thank god my project team had decided to revert all training sessions in KL hence forth. Yes, it did mean less travelling allowance for me, but it would also mean that I would not be held responsible should the trainees fail to show up… it was up to them after all!

- I also got involved in my first Company event, thanks to a friend in chruch who decided to rope me in. Though I groaned and at times got fed up with the work (I was in charge of communications so all the emails had to come from me), it was nevertheless an experience.  Luckily my supervisor had given me enough exposure in preparing communications materials for the project. Having that experience definitely allowed me to cope much better for this community day project activity.   It was also fun to coordinate and see backstage what are the components required to do a proper community day.  At the end of it, it was a job well done I should say :)

More in Part II on what happened in December and January

Posted in Church, Life, People, me, work | 1 Comment »

How God changes the heart…

September 4th, 2009 The author

I know I was supposed to write about Love in my last entry, but I think I will shelf that for sometime, got other things to write about  :)

We just recently finished our annual Youth camp over the weekend and there was something that took me by surprise. You see, one of my colleagues had actually joined the camp, and I didn’t really know it. In fact I never did think that this colleague of mine, or any of my colleagues for that matter would be interested in God and spirituality

Afterall, these kinda things were usually meant for hopeless cases, those simple-minded peasants who didn’t know how to control their own destiny

Given, the nature of my company’s employees, I had never expected that she would actually be interested in such things. I guess in part it’s also due to previous experience where I once approached a colleague of mine who was attending RCIA whether he would be interested in joining our youth group and because the response was not so encouraging, I kinda deduced that most working people would not be interested.

Afterall, who in their right mind would blow off their Friday nights and weekends to attend church activities?

And so you could imagine the look in my face when I saw her.

What on….

“Hey Prash, so where do I park and register?” she quipped me

“Umm…what are you doing here?” I asked, with my low-tone voice

“Huh?”

“Yeah you can just park there and there!”  I rapidly replied as I quickly snapped out of my astonishment look and begin pointing around.

And so, as the camp progressed, I kept a close eye on her, and I could see that she was transformed by the end of the whole camp session. She even went up to give her testimony, sharing with the audiance on how this camp has being meaningful to her.

I just sat there and wondered how on earth a person like this, (she was my senior by the way), could be so engrossed and impacted by such a camp. I mean fine, maybe I thought it was just one of those ‘feeling high’ things ; you’re all pumped up to serve God and be as close to him and His people as possible.

5 days have already gone,  and I still get text messages from her saying how impactful the camp has been.  While I’m still trying to grapple with it, I think perhaps what I’m really experiecing is a real-live testimony that God can indeed change hearts.  Ever since attending the camp, it seems like my friend has obtained a new lease of life. It’s as though she can somehow ‘breath’ again ; it’s as though she has found new hope in the midst of this calamity world.

While she’s going through her own discovery, I guess I’m discovering mine, and the discovery is simply this - God can change people, and when he does, you’re never the same. Perhaps God is using my colleague as a real testimony that He can transcend beyond corporate walls and career-minded successful people. Of course I have read such stories of God doing so, but never had I come across something like this. Never had I seen a colleague, or for that matter any colleague be so impacted by God.

To me, this is just a testimony, to show and prove that God’s love can penetrate through hearts. It’s a testimony proving that ‘Our hearts will not rest till it rests in God” . It’s a testimony proving that “Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven, and all else will be added unto you”.

It may not have happened to me, but through my friend, God has worked another miracle in my life.

“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you ; I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh” - Ezekil 36:26

“Therefore if anyone is in Christ, behold he is of a new creature; the old things have passed away and new things have come” - 2 Cor 5:17

Posted in Church, God, Love, Uncanny Philosophy, me | 1 Comment »

i