Reminiscing Truths ⚓

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Romans 12:1 (ESV)                     I have been pondering upon this thought since early last week when Hapi and I were choosing the hymns for the upcoming Sunday (yesterday). Abba has been preaching a mini-series on Christian Service for some Sundays now. When we were told that the sermon for yesterday would be about the personal application of Christian service, the  Take My Life and Let it Be  hymn immediately came to mind as a fitting hymn of preparation. I'm not sure whether the hymn had a similar scriptural reference, but it turned out to be really such an appropriate hymn to what the sermon discussed. The text was in Romans 12. This topic, of course, has already been preached several times before. It was highlighted in the mini-series on Biblical...

Pililia Wind Farm, 2019 “I don't mind close-ups, I like them, but they're kind of forceful - you see a lot, you get a lot of information in a close-up. There's less mystery.” —David Duchovny When I saw this quote online, it got me thinking. Do we really lose the “mystery-ness” of things when we get more information about them? The sense of awe and wonder—do they fade as you see the things you admire at a closer perspective? Surely, with the imperfect and the flawed, the trend of feeling lesser awe as one sees more is set. Not necessarily because of the mere fact that you’ve seen more of it—but because, being imperfect, when we see more of something, we inevitably see more of its flaws. More depths to the beauty we have initially perceived, yes, sometimes. But the flaws, scars, dents, and imperfections that were so carefully hidden before are also now brought to light. In a different light, this fallen world, and everything in it, becomes less appealing. N...

He whom the Lord loves, He disciplines. If you experience correction in your walk, rejoice. Not everyone is NOT left to their own destructive paths and ways. You hear the voice of God that reproves. Other have only silence. Every christian walking in his earthly journey still has a lot of learning and unlearning to do. If you see God’s hands coming down to you, and with great might, find comfort in this: that He makes your crooked ways straight. His hands are not to condemn you, but to correct you. So HATE your sin, Christian. Know that each crooked act and way is an offense against the Almighty God. Be wretched and mourn and weep. Mortify your sins; do not give any room for them, not even their shadow. Flee from them and their temptations. Discipline yourself, beat your body black and blue, lest you become disqualified and you fail to meet the test. Strip off your sinful and crooked ways, lest you find yourself unfit for the Kingdom. But also, learn to kiss the waves that ...

I know in mind and heart that this is your most difficult birthday just yet. How it feels to have an ever gnawing pain with you when you wake up in the morning, and when you go to sleep at (mid) night, and every single time you let your thoughts wander far enough during the day. Maybe you also feel sometimes that you have to "suck it up and get on with it" because "it's been months," and you can't do anything about the past, so you just have to move forward. It's hard and difficult and painful, and the task before us is looming and terrifying. I mean how can life be not terrifying when so much has changed? But He who promised to us life and life abundant, in this world and the next, is faithful. And somehow this thought gets me through the hardest nights. Hoping it would also be of comfort and soothing balm to you. I love you, and happy birthday. I'm always praying for you, and for the day when we'd all cross beyond the River to our ete...

It has been a very meditative week of more devoted prayer and intermittent fasting (or intermittent eating because I fasted more than I ate). A lot has been shoved down my plate lately, and this week started off with another shaking and breaking. And there are many, many, many  lessons and happenings in the span of a week. Additional work load to my ever increasing pile of school duties. Same old issues resurfacing. The old burden and zeal to invest in the lives of other people--and not seeing pleasant results. Same old, but brand new stories of I-don't-like-you's. Of feeling like the girl in between two worlds--never quite in one, never quite part of the other. Many things. I am still trying to process each of these very much tangled, very much interconnected ball of thoughts and feelings. Maybe one day, I get to write about each one ever more clearly. But one of the things that I had (have, still not over) to deal with, is my still very much unsettled feeling and reso...

But I'm barely breathing. Yep. Going classic The Script here. And I also should've been doing play analysis, and grades, and output checking, yadda yadda. I know. I know. I'm not in my most productive mode. But things have been toppling up so fast lately, and like the back pain I have to get a massage for at least every other week, I need to do a more in-depth processing of every "lemon" of emotions I have, or this would totally swallow me up and paralyze me to complete inaction. As the whole world knows, it was World Teachers' Day yesterday, October 5th. There was a simple program in UMAK HSU yesterday morning, where the teachers were (rather instantaneously) told to prepare a dancing/singing presentation. (And yes, I "danced", if you even call that dancing.) There were also a lot of little things that happened throughout the program--food, raffles, the PTA president subtly campaigning for her government official husband, students coming ...

Make  brewed,  black,  barako coffee and sit back as the world wonders how you did it.  get right back to work after a quick shower at 2 AM, because you can't afford an extra minute of sleep. Life is pretty tough in teaching. Especially in teaching in a public university. I'm not sure how it goes in other universities. I would like to think that somewhere out there, there is an institution that (1) has the most conducive teacher-student proportion, (2) has all their administrative concerns taken care of by an entirely different set of employees, and (3) has its curriculum and academic activities all properly ironed out all throughout the year, so that all their teachers are left with only the original tasks they are supposed to deal with--teaching a handful of kids, one or two course preps, and focusing on how to be a positive influence to the lives of these souls. But there's never a perfect school in this fallen, crooked world. Every ideal institu...

[I presented this testimony earlier this year to the congregation for an evangelistic night. An evangelistic night is a vesper service modified to accommodate the sharing of the gospel to unbelievers, and one part of it is the sharing of the members' testimony of how God saved them. I was one of the first ones to share.] A friend once asked me just a few months ago for my written testimony when I applied for this church. I didn’t think there was any problem, but when I thought more about it, I realized that my testimony I wrote for the church 6 years ago is not something I could share anymore. Not because my salvation story then wasn’t true, but because a lot of God-given, life-changing lessons happened after I was saved. I guess the first thing I realized is that testimonies are always changing because God never stops writing our story. For this afternoon I would like to share who I was before I knew God, what God did to save me, and what God taught me after being saved. ...

[Hi. I'm Rebekah, and I have decided to use a platform different from my Tales and Rhymes blog for my more personal writings. Originally, I have decided several years ago to just maintain one blog site, which would primarily contain only my literary pieces. I've decided to take a step back from sharing what transpires in my life to the digital platform because of  several reasons. Recently, though, my life had me go through a winding roller coaster ride, and it's just full of shifts and changes. L ife has had me drowning from all the salty waves and stormy winds it throws at me—and I could hardly keep my head above the surface. But these storms teach me priceless lessons and reveal to me invaluable realizations. And so I decided to share these lessons in writing, because who knows who might benefit from them? This letter somewhat summarizes the things I have been dealing with these past few months. There are way more than the things I’ve mentioned, of course, but ...