itherese Leung’s blog

( I read this from an email. This is for our Nation, and everyone in it, including myself. Lord, have mercy.)

Heavenly Father, we come before you today to ask your forgiveness and to seek your direction and guidance. We know Your Word says, ‘Woe to those who call evil good,’ but that is exactly what we have done.

We have lost our spiritual equilibrium and reversed our values.
We have exploited the poor and called it the lottery.
We have rewarded laziness and called it welfare.
We have killed our unborn and called it choice.
We have shot abortionists and called it justifiable.
We have neglected to discipline our children and called it building self esteem.
We have abused power and called it politics.
We have coveted our neighbor’s possessions and called it ambition.
We have polluted the air with profanity and pornography and called it freedom of expression.
We have ridiculed the time-honored values of our forefathers and called it enlightenment.

Search us, Oh God, and know our hearts today; cleanse us from every sin and Set us free In Jesus’ name, Amen!

There is such a teaching in the Bible, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” (Matthew 5:44). Enemies hurt us, they wish us ill, why would we love them?

For those who do not believe in Jesus, this is just nonsense. And if I were one, this teachings would even have scared me away. The situation would be like the rich man who ran away sad when Jesus asked him to sell all he had for the poor (Mark 10:17-22).

That sounds unaccomplishable. That is just too hard.

That made me think. I asked myself, why would I accept this? Was that “because he said so”?

I think that different people have different reasons to believe in Jesus. For me, it is his teaching and manifestation of Love. He teaches us what love is. He died for us when we were still sinners. We had never deserved this love. This is what love is about. For God “makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust”(Matthew 5:45), He does not love according to our good, but he loves us all no matter what. If he only love those who deserve, Jesus would never have come. This is what true love is. I am not saying that loving someone means dying for them, but its unconditionality. We hope to be loved. Maybe by parents, family, friends, colleagues, boyfriend/girlfriend, husband/wife, children, etc. If we are loved according to how good we are, we will be fearful all the time. Because we are not perfect. We will be afraid that we would lose somebody’s love due to our faults. This is so sad. How can we have peace in this so-called ‘Love’? Jesus teaches us the nature of love, the true meaning of love. “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” This is the love that we can really rest in. The love that can truly bring unity.

For Jesus has loved me when I was still a sinner, for I hope to be loved, I want to spread the love.

Like faith, love needs works. Sometimes when we are angry, disappointed by someone, we might forget what love is and turn to a mind of revenge. This is one of the humans’ evil nature. That is why we need to practice, make it a nature of ourselves, and keep it. However, without God’s help, we can hardly exercise it.

God, help me to love, as you have loved me.

When someone take advantage of us, take the occasion to practice love.

So what happened when all those questions popped up in my head? (please refer to my last post if you have no idea what I am talking about)

I asked my teacher. She opened the Bible and read it with me the stories before and after the calling of the disciples (Mark 1:16-20). The answer was: They did not know. They did not know that Jesus was the one yet. They found Him a wise man and a good teacher thus followed Him. While they were following Him, they listened to his teachings, they witnessed his miracles and power, they saw how He treated the sinners and the poor, then they believed. Although they believed, they still had doubts (they were really frustrated after Jesus died but before He rose again). They fully believe that Jesus was the Christ who truly came and saved people after they witnessed Jesus’ resurrection AND consistently praying to and relying on the Holy Spirit.

Faith is a life-long journey. At the beginning I heard of Him. From his stories, and other believers’ lives, I knew he taught good. From teachings of the Church and my family, I heard that He was God, He saved us from sins, He brought us reconciliation with God our heavenly father, etc. I accepted and I believed. I have experienced God in my life, but I still have a lot of questions, I still be anxious when things are not working out as I desire, I still worry when I cannot see the future clearly.

Faith is a life-long journey. It does not end when we recognize Him. It is just a start. Faith needs to be practiced, it needs to be strengthened. God gives us a lot of tests in the journey for us to exercise our faith. We enhance it by consistently seeking Him, knowing Him, trusting Him and relying Him.

There is a long way ahead of me. I pray to God that I can always have faith and live out my belief.

Recently I have been thinking about my belief.

I did not really remember how I started believing, because I was raised in a Catholic environment, God hasn’t been a stranger to me since the first day I was born. When I was a teenager, I participated actively in religious communities, both at church and at school. One day, a non-Christian schoolmate asked me, “You believe in God is that because people told you that it was true since you were small?” I thought for a bit, then I said ‘yes’.

After that I started thinking. Was that the reason? Later I found it was not the reason, but the seed. I am always grateful about my parents had seeded this belief on my life. I believe that God has plan for each individual, for each of his precious creatures. Each of us encounter God in different times, in different ways, as many ways as we can never imagine. I first encountered Him in my family.

As I grew up, I started to have questions. I doubted, I wanted to know more. As I studied in Catholic school, I had Religious Study class (simply saying, Bible class) in my syllabus. I heard a lot of stories and teachings of Jesus from the class. When we read that Jesus’ first twelve disciples gave up their families and all their belongings to follow Jesus immediately when they were called, we appreciated them, we complimented their spontaneous replies to God’s calling. However, I did not understand. I appreciated them too, I wanted to be like them, but I did not understand how would they do that. For so many false prophecy at that time (many claimed that they were Christ who came to save the Israels from Romans), how could they know that Jesus was really the one, just at the moment when Jesus called them? They did not have the Bible which told them that Jesus was going to die for us and raise from death because those had not happened yet. So what made them believe that they were not fooled?

Let me continue tomorrow.

(I find it so difficult to write long passages, especially in English. One of the purpose of this blog is to practice my writing skills, therefore I try my best to write in English although it is much easier to express my ideas in my mother language. So please pardon me if it isn’t written well, and please correct me if any mistake is found. Thank you very much.)