Of Peter Crouch and Never Say Die

Last Saturday was a memorable day.

No, it was not my birthday. No, it was not me getting an A for any of my subjects. No, it was not me completing a paper. It was the celebration of Peter Crouch's first goal.

Many of you may have known my weakness to football. My legs will start going wobbly when I think about missing out a 'live' football game. Last Saturday was no exception as I watched Liverpool demolish Wigan 3-0 at Anfield. What makes it more special is that it was Peter Crouch who finally scored. After 22 continous football games, equivalent to 24 hours, the lanky striker scored and the Kop roared. I shouted, and woke my wife up on an early Saturday morning. I cannot help being happy for that courageous lad, who never gave up but believed that one day he will 'break the duck'. He did not once but twice.

That is a worthy attitude in Crouch, not only because I am a Liverpool fan but because of the self-belief that builds upon the trust and faith people have in Crouch. As I thought about this, there are 3 simple lessons to learn.

First, never say never. A striker will eventually score. The goal will eventually be achieved. The target will eventually be reached. It is a matter of patience and diligent waiting. Second, faith. We need to learn to believe that it is possible. Though I am wary of building up egoistic confidence, I think it becomes more meaningful when you are doing it in the midst of such wide support when everyone believes in you. It makes achieving something for yourself as achieving something for others as well. When one can achieve a personal conviction with an eye to encouraging others, I think it is a worthy task. Finally, do not be discouraged. Hebrews 11 has a long list of people who kept faith despite not seeing the results soon. We need to learn to press on, regardless of the results. That act of pressing on will bring us at least a step closer to the goal. Like Paul, we need to leave aside all that hinders us, and press on towards to goal, the calling set out for us in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.

kianseng

How to Create PDF Documents?

Ever wondered how to create pdf documents without having to shell out large $$$ to buy the Adobe Acrobat suite of software? Not that I discourage anyone from buying from Adobe. It seemed to me as plain silly to buy the whole suite just to get one small feature of the whole software. As long as you are using MacOS or running OpenOffice software on Windows, the ability to create pdf is already built in. For those of us without such programs, especially Windows users, you can check out the following.

Here are some useful links to the free downloads.

1) http://www.cutepdf.com/
2) http://www.gohtm.com/convert_pdf.asp (online)
3) http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/ (Recommended)


There are several others but I think the above should suffice.

ks

Snow! plus Reflections on the humble Tree.

Snow came early to Vancouver. It is nice to see the flurries of white coming down on the whole neighbourhood and blanketed much of the lower mainland.

It is a nice change of scenery to move my eyes from the computer and books to marveling at how miraculous nature itself is. The same tree showed at least 4 different displays of colours over a calendar year. how it adapted to the seasonal changes proved its resilience.

There is much to learn from a tree, one of my favourite nature sights. In the Spring, the leaves and flowers gushes out as like time waits for no man (er tree). In Summer, the tree maintained its shiny glory, providing much shade for the hot and thirsty people taking a break from the summer heat. In Fall, the tree began to get ready for the long weather and the leaves turned golden yellow. By Winter, all the leaves would have been shed and the tree starts to conserve and wait for the right season.

We should learn to anticipate changes like the tree. Otherwise, we will not be able to survive the seasons of life. People has said that 'luck' is when opportunity and readiness meet. The Scriptures exhort us to be prepared in season and out of season. For what? To share the hope that we have in Christ.

kianseng

Bible Numerics

Many people revere the Bible. Some memorize large chunks of it. Others refer to it whenever the need arises. Many if not all who have encountered it, can attest to its impact on individual lives. There is a particular group of people who revere the Bible so much that the Bible itself proves its divine nature. A special group dwelled into the numerics of the Bible, in the light of popular reading from the BIBLE CODE. Is there really a Bible Code? Is there divine meaning in the numbers?

A popular theory is that in the Bible, there exists a mysterious and marvelous numerical pattern which establishes the correctness and proves the divine nature of the Holy Scriptures.

Oswald Thompson Allis in his short study on Bible Numerics has this to say:
1) The theory works only when attention is focused on places that works, while ignoring other areas where there DON'T work.
2) The wide variety of ways to arrive at the numerical features and factors merely proved that discovery of such devices are hard to find, and often depends on the ingenuity of the reader. This alone does not make Bible numerics any more significant than other 'common numbers'.

Simple counting of Bible verses, words, letters in the mathematical domain does not help us as far as faith is concerned. Afterall, the verse numbers and chapters are a later addition to help readers in the reading of the Holy Scriptures. In fact, the very same phenomena that Bible numerics use can be found elsewhere. A simple statement like "We had tea and toast for breakfast.", can even be considered 'divine' as it has 7 words and 28 letters!

Be careful not to use seemingly marvelous or impressive mathematical formulation to justify faith. Faith is beyond mathematics. It is beyond numbers. The numbers are there to help us, not to be worshiped.

kianseng

E=mc2

Being a scholar means you have to learn to quote other people's works, and to quote as many as you can. For many people, it is a representation of how widely-read you are. For others, it is the sheer caution of not wanting to plagiarise other peoples' work.

Occasionally I get sick of citing others. So this time, I let Einstein have the honours.

cheers.

David Seamands

Another sad piece of news of high-flying pastors caught in the sexual trap.

Making a Living

How do we make a living?

The word 'living' in modern usage has been used as a noun. A man needs to make a living, meant that he needs to earn his bread and butter. All he does in life is to achieve the purpose of making ends meet. Sounds pathetic if all we do is to make a living this way. For what?


Rom. 14:9 ¶ For this very reason, Christ died and returned to life so that he might be the Lord of both the dead and the living.

In the verse above, and many other verses in the New Testament the word 'living' is used as a verb.

c