How can I keep from shouting Your praise?

After reading Joshua 4 on how God instructed each tribe to pick a stone and place them together as a memorial of God’s faithfulness and power to the people of Israel forever, I guess its also time for me to make my own memorial of sorts, albeit digitally. And without heavy stones.

So, this post (which hopefully will last “forever” barring any WordPress malfunction/the internet being destroyed by evil half-robotic mutants bent on ruining the social lives of many a geek) shall be my 2008 memorial. For myself as a reminder of all the blessings and faithfulness God has shown me, and for others to see His glory.

The first half of the year is generally hazy for me (which also brings me to the importance of journalling – but let’s not get into new year resolutions just yet) – but of course there was Alpha; for all its tiresomeness, tiring-ness and tea, it brought us Penn, Josh, Mitchell and Gavin Foo. And that, without a doubt, made it more than worth it.

Somewhere in between, I managed to lose my lovely black MacBook (damn you, current white one which gets dirty soooo easily!) but even more amazingly, managed to stay calm and praise God nonetheless, because at least I didn’t lose any important files due to the fact that a week before that I somehow got it into my head to backup my hard drive. Now that I look back, this was probably the first inkling of my great 2008 lesson. Read on.

Then there was church camp which flowed rather quickly into China trip – a real mess of events in June – but where my journey this year began. The single lesson I’ve learnt this year (by which all other lessons kind of stem from and bow down to in sheer reverence) is to simply leave everything in God’s hands. And by everything, He means everything, which is probably why this lesson is still going on today. From losing my most prized laptop, to leading a group in camp, to biking and speaking Chinese at the same time, I can see how they all converge into one huge lesson: trust!

And I’m really thankful for it, because once you get over the initial reluctance of not managing your own destiny, you’ll find that it makes life that much less worrisome. “What? Not be in control of your life?,” you gasp. Well, yeah, but rather than it being akin to taking my lemons (so often a metaphor for life, for some reason) and letting them rot in the fruit basket, letting God manage my life is like giving my lemons to an awesome bartender whom you know will use them to make the most kickass magheritas you have ever tasted.

Like I said, the mixing and shaking might be a tad uncomfortable, but as they say, the process is everything.

Most recently, of course, was Camp Plunge, where I was shown once again that jumping in with God can only bring good things. My group was great and I love them all alot – Matt, Angel, Penn, Josh, Joshie and Jon – you guys made me laugh incredibly much, but also showed me how God can work! And its definitely not by my strength.

And finally, this memorial is for God’s goodness and faithfulness in bringing my grandfather to know Him, after 95 long years. When my mum told me that my grandpa told her, “I want to know Jesus”, the joy I felt was just overwhelming. Lesson no. 2 begins: everything in His time.

So I place my final stone on this pseudo-memorial of mine, in hopes that when you look at it too, you will begin to see the glory of the King.