Dear…
Into Your hands I commit my spirit, redeem me O Lord the God of truth.
Psalm 31:5
I penned these opening thoughts as I waited for my unplanned session with my cardiologist. Titling my thoughts with a question my dear brother in Christ asked me earlier this morning -
Am I ready, if our good Lord were to take me home now?
But the Lord God called to the man, Where are you?
Genesis 3:9
For many of us, being ready would in the main mean
- getting our financials in order both in sustainability and in the structuring.
The latter included the putting in place a will and a limited power of attorney.
- waiting for our children to reach adulthood.
- fulfilling our bucket list
- repairing, renewing or rebuilding once lost relationships
- Finally taking stock of what comes after when we leave our bodily shell?
But often, the missing elements to set things right are time and capacity. The Straits Times reported that Singaporeans have the longest life span in the world. But what is more telling is that while most might live to age 85, the last 10 years will be dealing with various physical, if not emotional ailments.
What seems so important for most in their active years was the need to fill up their barns for retirement, only to realize that while resources might seem finite, hence the squirrel like focus.
What is a definite is the brevity of life, and where should one truly invest in?
The temporal or eternity?
...for dust you are and to dust you will return.
Genesis 3:19
For the determination to put things into the right perspective often comes when the sunrise days are clearly numbered for us, where what once was seen as important, be it material well being, status, power, lusts are now fleeting, in our incapacitated and wasting shell.
Our spirit might now be more inclined, but the body is less able.
Am I ready?
I would think I have ticked all of the boxes on the checklist above. Very much more ready than back in Sep 2011, when the cloth covering the hourglass of each of our finite lives was removed for me.
A widow maker, the term to describe the consequences for me should the 40% blockage strategically located at the gateway to my aorta ever trigger a heart attack.
A widow maker is when you get a big blockage at the beginning of the left main artery or the left anterior descending artery (LAD). They're a major pipeline for blood. If blood gets 100% blocked at that critical location, it's almost always fatal without emergency care
It’s been 8 years since that God initiated CT scan and God is indeed graceful.
My health has been generally great till 2 days back when I experienced a severe and painful muscle spasm on my left chest.
Was it a muscle strain from exercise or something more?
Am I truly ready?
It's a wakeup call. I might have been diligent in seeking to be right with our Lord since His Spirit fell upon me in Bangkok back in 2001, but truth be told, I often fall short, and our good Lord knows the imperfect but willing me could do with an occasional prod to the senses.
As I crossed my 58th year today, it is with joy to know that imperfect as I am, because of the grace of God, He has placed that strong desire in me these past 18 years since He lifted the veil upon my heart at age 40, to seek to live out His key two commandments in Mark 12:30-31
- To love the Lord my God with all my heart and with all my soul and with all my mind and with all my strength.
- Love my neighbour as myself. There is no commandment greater than these
The most cherished 18 years of my seeking to be like Christ is the intimacy of relationships formed including with many of you, my dear friends who are on this mail list. A relationship that time and distance bear no barrier to the comfort and closeness that is only possible because Christ is our focus.
And much as God is very much unseen by our natural senses, the communion of my spirit with His Holy Spirit is an outworking of His grace in lifting the veil upon my heart, and His imbuing in my spirit man, this desire to draw near to Him always.
Imperfect as we all are, if we are willing, we will be ready, not because we are perfect, but we know the Perfect God. And He walks with us in the days of our living. So that when it is time to move into eternity, He not just wait for us, but His Spirit walks with us.
Better is one day in Your courts than thousands elsewhere.
Psalm 84:10
And so to all my friends, it is my prayer that if God calls, not the curtain call to eternity as yet, but rather upon you to move from believer to follower, do respond and continue to respond.
And even if the call might not seem palpable at this moment, you can start to get ready for His call, for He has left us with the Book of Life, and a community of His children to help us get ready. And on these closing thoughts, let me share the excerpt below of a true story that attests once again that God at His timing and ways, will call you
From Pearl Harbor to salvation. A book about the Japanese pilot who led the first wave of attack on Pearl Harbour in World War 2. Yet in the divine ways of God, this man was led to seek God after Japan surrendered, because he happened to receive a Christian tract from an American who testified of his time in a Japanese POW camp in China. The cause of it was this American’s anger at the same Pearl Harbour attack that led him to volunteer for the US air force reprisal attack on Nagoya. And the time in prison led to his receiving the Bible and the Holy Spirit conviction of his spirit.
And leaving the best for the last. My cardio was checking my kidney for gallstone and less for a potential or actual heart attack. A clean bill of health he concurred, for it could possibly be a muscle strain. Thanks be to God.
If I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labor for me. Yet what shall I choose? I do not know! I am torn between the two; I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far.
Philippians 1:22-23
God Blesses
Eng Hieang
20th June 2019
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