Of swines and maggots

Yahoo! Personals - It's time to give fate a nudge. Create your profile or search for free.

So What So I've Got A Smile On - Tuesday, October 28, 2008 at 10:33 AM

after the shadows, we talk about smiles, wat say ya?

You know what to do

So what so i've got a smile on

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

Directed, produced, written by WC

We Are Crooked Souls Trying To Stay Up Straight - Saturday, October 25, 2008 at 11:05 AM

Cannot sleep once again. Got myself to blame this time, had plenty of sleep the night before but took another 1 and half hour nap in the afternoon. My eyes were a bit sore, so i convinced myself nothing a short (relative term here) nap cannot cure. Remedy for sore eyes or just being a pure bum, i think it's a mixture of both.

And the consequence of which... is i'm typing this now at 2am, and i got to be up by 9 tmrw. Deja vu.

So, to pass the time, surprise surprise, random entry.

Before i start, using Christian terminology and switching/turning you, the audience (yes, all 2 of you), off, do give this a read as i think it will at the very least give you an insight to the age old question of:

"If God is so good, why is He doing all these bad things (i.e. boy/girlfriend broke up with you, lousy test results... you get the picture) to me?"

Recently I stumbled across this Switchfoot song "The shadow proves the sunshine" and i thought it to be lyrically beautiful and profound. And no, this isn't the arty-farty-pretender from engineering speaking, it's just that the nature of the lyrics is such that i immediately drew parallels of it to my own struggles when i first heard it. And no, it's not like some nonsense fallout boy lyrics where one line can mean a million different things to the same person.

The "storyline" of the whole song is basically about a guy/girl, or maybe even a pair, who's facing various difficulties in life, i.e. facing the "shadow" in their lives. The first verse tells of how their hearts are "frozen" and "darken", and the second about how "storm clouds" are gathering beside them, and crying for God not to "forsake" them or to "look away", and them feeling that God is "far away". The chorus becomes like a beacon of hope to these people facing a valley in their lives, that although they are jaded with things, it encourages them to "hold fast to the brink of day", and climaxes at the interlude with the sunshine "shining on them". I'm taking the sunshine here as a parallel to God, just to make things clear.

So... if God is so good, how can he do such nasty things to us? (Btw, I shan't go into the "big" perspective of why are there famines in the world, 'cos that question's a bit different.) I think we got to remember that we're all living in a fallen world where many things can just... happen. People steal, lie, cheat and kill. (See ** for my take on it. I think i'll digress) We face difficulties, and we question God most on the times based on our feelings. 'cos if we know (as a fact) that God is for us, we know that trials are part of His plan, but we feel otherwise, cos we are facing the problem which doesn't make us feel good, hence we can see whether we are using our knowledge of God or "at-the-moment" feelings to face our problems.

In this respect, we often face the "shadows" in our lives, not bothering to look behind us, which is where the sunshine is. This makes God seem so far away and turning His back to us, but in actual fact, He's always there, jsut that WE have turned our backs against Him. The shadow is just there, and it might seem so often that it is created by the sunshine (God) specifically for the sake of creating difficulties for us (see ** for further exp.), but... look who's in the way, creating this shadow. Us. We sinned in the first place, which caused this world to be fallen. The shadow is what it is... lack of sunshine. lack of God. The world has to follow a certain set of physical rules, and still in the imagery of the song, the physics of light, travelling in a straight line, forming shadows when blocked by a non-translucent object.

Not to stretch this imagery too far ('cos after all, it is an analogy to prove a specific point), i think the main thing i got out of it is trials will always be there, maybe sometimes because God wants to test our faith in Him, or maybe sometimes it's just the fallen nature of this world. Just to spell it out, maybe your bf broke up with you because God wanted to see how much you can trust in Him in this, or maybe it's just because you said something nasty and broke his heart, and he broke up with you because, that's just how it works in this world. It's how we face it, whether we want to continue to face our shadows with fear, hatred and bitterness, thinking God is just so far away, or to just simply turn around, facing God and trusting Him to take care of the shadows behind you. And hey, these trials, they are to prove that God is always there!

Just to clarify, I'm explaining this using the song, but of course (hopefully) in line with the bible. Song's pretty much there for poetic reasons and of course the thing which provoked these thoughts in me in the first place. Well, don't take what i say as the truth! Do email me if you have any questions/grievances, and we'll discuss! Sounds cool... at least to me. And yes, my email should be at the bottom... i just realised that. explains the spam i've been receiving all these years. *slaps forehead*

**Briefly: We weren't meant be like that, God made us perfect, in the image of him, but we messed it up at the very beginning (Adam and Eve) and hence, became part of this fallen world. God didn't create evil, neither did he create temptations per se, because He is perfect. So how? Contradiction? Nay... Being created perfect in his image, God knows that we have to have certain virtues, and innocence isn't one of them. Innocence surviving temptations, that's the key thing that God wants us to achieve. The tree wasn't planted in the garden of Eden for men to screw up, but for us to survive temptation and to show spiritual maturity and having God's perspective in our lives. It's not "what" that was created that mattered, but "why".

We, really, are crooked souls trying to stay up straight, but just remember that the shadows we see everyday, they just prove that the sunshine is always there.