love you.

"My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends."
John 15:12-14

It was so great to catch up personally with Si, Joyce, Olie, Steph and Jaytee these two weeks. Coupled with an emotional issue that I was facing, I realized friendship with AA3 is such a lovely thing, and I want it to last forever. I mean it.

Yesterday, I looked through all of the 1294 of my pictures on Facebook (!!!). And I had this feeling welling up in me, not the tears that the man with rickets gave me, but some beautiful feeling. And I want to say I love you.

I love you AA3. I love you because you're in AA3, because we spent two funny years together, and because you are so beautiful and charming as God sees you, just as worthless yet worthy like me for Jesus to die for us to be friends forever.

I want to be friends with you for eternity. I want to be friends with you personally. I want to tell you the Awesome Story. I want to be able to love you so much that if we were one day held hostage, I will die on your behalf, in your place, like my Lover and Friend did. I want to walk with you and love you while we live here, and walk with you and love you like Jesus does...till eternity.



I know I have talked about you once, twice, thrice, four, five, six times. And then for a year and a half, I stopped talking about you and I wasn't really interested in you because I didn't think you were worth my time anymore.

I want to name you just again. To Si, Joyce, Olie, Adiba, Reks, Haz, Arina, Steph, Sam, Mel, Ank, Jaytee, Kenneth, Sher, Simin, Grace, Ches, Ivan, Amos: I love you.



Photos from Sher and Jaytee.

Fall break!

God, thank you for such a great week! It sure was busy spending time with people, and I'm looking forward to yet another day of sweet fellowship and fun! Over this week, I watched Forrest Gump and cried by myself, went for a photography exhibition and the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition with high school friends, the Navigators Grace Community meeting for juniors, sent Kenneth off to Durham, U.K., learnt a new song, played a lot with the neighbor's cats, finally met a friend's friend, on top of another friend, and jammed with friends for the first time. In addition to school, which made school life fun.

Fall break's started! Since I'm not going anywhere, here's my plan:

Get back to 12-8 + nap regime.
Make one craft with my sister.
H.I.I.T. the stairs!!! and cycle around.
Meet friends.
Read.
Do what I want for fun.
Homework.

Excited!

Our Job as Gardenkeepers

What does the creational mandate mean for us believers today?

Does the Great Commission replace it by emphasizing spiritual multiplication over physical lineage?

Since 2 Peter 3 tells us all creation is going to be dissolved away in fire in the future, do we stop taking care of God's creation? Or do we let forests burn, mock at recycling campaigns, and ignore abused animals?

Perhaps believers who believe we can abandon the creation mandate (in its literal sense) are trying to avoid the humanist, social gospel in the 1980's and 90's that prized physical needs over Jesus Christ as the means to 'make the world a better place'.

But God would be quite a deceptionist if he let me feel the way I did today. While on my way to school, I saw a three-week-old-ish kitten wet, lonely and mewing very loudly in the drain. It was most probably carried off by the morning rain. For a kitten the size of my short-fingered palm, it must have been terrifying. Immediately and instinctively, I wanted to help Kitty. I wanted to grab a towel and buy cat's milk and skip class and bring it home.

Turned out there are were three others washed further down the drain, and they were 'adopted' by a few girls who live in the vicinity. For a while, I was worried and hoped the kids take care of the kittens properly.

And just a while ago, I finally saw my neighbor's cats again after they went into hiding for a few days from a stray cat who wanted to fight with one of them. I play with them so they come to me. When we heard that street cat calling, the cats hid for a while but they ended not being afraid, because they knew I was around. And I was bigger and more powerful than that street cat, like God promised when he restated to Noah's family the command to multiply and rule over His creation.

Maybe I'm not making much sense because my thoughts are preliminary. But I want to know what God says about environmentalism and loving animals. It's pretty obvious why, but I want to know how to defend it.

I don't know how to do up captions, but that's cute lil Ginger of Little Chapel after an hour of 'quiet time' with her, and this is sky...in Singapore!