Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz

Hope Isaiah gave a nick-name to his son... this I think, could be the longest name in the Bible...

"Then I (Isaiah) went to the prophetess, and she conceived and gave birth to a son. And the Lord said to me, "Name him Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz."

Isa 8:3

I came upon this verse from a Reverend Fun toon I saw. Click here to take a look.

Not coincidentally, learnt in BSF this week that Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz was born to Isaiah (as well as Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz's brother Shear-Jashub) as a sign to their generation of God's promise about a virgin conceiving.

Just a corny scenerio I had in mind... Imagine Isaiah saying this to his son... "Oi! Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz! *pant pant* Dinner's ready!" :p

care to join me?

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure

"And friends are friends forever

If the Lord's the Lord of them

And a friend will not say "never"

Cause the welcome will not end

Though it's hard to let you go

In the Father's hands we know

That a lifetime's not too long

to live as friends."

"Friends"

Michael W.Smith

time...

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 [NIV]

[1]There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under heaven:

[2] a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
[3] a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
[4] a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
[5] a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain,
[6] a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
[7] a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
[8] a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.

Do we accept the harsh times we are in?

The loss continues...

Feeling loss.

The truth and nothing but the truth

Elder Daniel John was preaching about truth today. (in context, he was expounding on the 9th commandant in the 10 commandments)

"You shall not give false testimony against your neighbour"

Exo 20:16 (NIV)

In essence, his message today was a reminder about us as Christians speaking things truthfully. It was a clear message, well thought through and a good reminder. Enough humour to liven things up a litte :) However, I think that due to the sake of time, he didn't go into what THE TRUTH is.

This set me thinking and I spent a bit of time reading into the Bible about what is THE TRUTH and what better verse than to start with than Jn 14:6.

I found out that the Greek word used in John 14:6--"I am the way, the truth, and the life..." is aletheia. This means ‘the truth’. Reading on, aletheia is a derivative of the Greek word, alethes. (in terms of English, think of words like successful and successor and how they’re derived from success ) Alethes means ‘true: not concealing’. Phil 4:8 is one example where alethes is used. From alethes, comes another word—aletheuo, which means, ‘to speak the truth’. Aletheuo is used in verses like Eph 4:15 & Col 1:5.

So, this all looks something like this:

Alethes (true: not concealing)

= Aletheia (the truth)

= Aletheuo (to speak the truth)

But that was just the beginning…

I found out that alethes was a derived word itself! And the word which it was derived from is a, the first letter of the Greek alphabet. (haha.. “big” surprise :p). But anyway, ‘a’ itself has its origins in Hebrew (back to the Old Testament) and the meaning of ‘a’? It means ‘the first—alpha’. And example where this is used in the bible is in Rev 1:8—“I am the Alpha and Omega…”

So, at the end of the day, what did I learn? (assuming I’m right in my interpretations… I’ll need to seek help in this as this is my first time going into Greek and Hebrew. If I’m wrong, I’ll send out an apology blog)

Well, searching for THE TRUTH revealed a quite a few dimensions and lessons I could draw.

1) Jesus is God. He is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. By saying “I am the truth”, Jesus meant to tell the disciples that He is God. The equal to the Yahweh that the Jews worshipped. Jesus was not a messenger of the truth. He IS THE truth.

2) Jesus IS TRUTH. This meant that his whole life and ALL of what He has said, which is captured in the Bible, is truth and is true. Nothing in the Bible is contradictory or false. His main message to Man was that because of Man’s sin, there was absolutely nothing Man could do to be reconciled to God. Freedom from sin could not be from fulfilling the law (being morally upright, being ethical, ect). Freedom from sin lay in Jesus himself—the belief that Jesus is Lord.

3) We are to be truthful in speech. As Christians, we are commanded to be truthful in all that we say (Eph 4:15,25). That is, we must not speak falsely against our neighbour (those around us). And this sourced from the 9th commandment. Our motivation is not to fulfil a commandment, but it’s to encourage each other to be like THE TRUTH—Christ himself.

4) We are to speak of THE TRUTH. As Christians, we’re not just supposed to speak truthfully; we are to speak to others about THE TRUTH; about Jesus himself; about the gospel.

5) We are to live out THE TRUTH. Now, the Holy Spirit lives in us. God lives in us. THE TRUTH lives in us. And we are to live a life exemplifying this truth. And the only way to do this is surrender to the Holy Spirit, bit by bit, day by day. This process is not easy… a life of Truth was not meant to be easy. Jesus Christ himself suffered and we are to suffer for him as well.

To end off, I hope this encourages you as much as it encouraged me:

“And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true; and we are in him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life”

1 Jn5:20

THANK YOU!

This time, my turn to say that I've had an eventful weekend :)

It started of with listening to a good sermon from Chris Chia on 2 Tim 3 last friday. For those interested in listening to the sermon, click HERE :) This is good stuff :)

Then on Sat, spent the morning doing a bit of work, but otherwise, I wasn't too motivated to do much heavy work... hehe... Met up with the script writers at 5 to work on the Christmas script. Thanks for making the effort Jan, Shiyin and Yifen! :) Tried a new tea at the 'Tea Party' where we met-- Blueberry Yogurt... interesting taste ;) Then... my surprise came! :) Thanks everyone! We went to the nearby Pasta Fresca and "played Musical Pasta" :p There were 10 of us there and well, every single plate of pasta was passed round! We all tried all the varieties, though at the end of the day, it was hard to figure out what pasta was what! :p But the food was good though :) Real rich (the tomato and cream-based ones) but good... like what Italian should be! One pasta stood out though... It was the Al Pesto Genovese with Triangolini as the Pasta The sause was a strange green... but it was good! :) Thanks Dorcas, Yifen and Jan for planning the dinner and the rest who came to celebrate my birthday with me! Gam Siah!

Woke up pretty happy on Sun as... well, a guy is entitiled to feel happy on his birthday right? ;p Sunday was a long day though... met up with some of the cast of the skit after service and once again, the skit went through a fairly major facelift. For dinner, went out with my parents and a few of the evening service people for dinner at Gillman Food Centre (Beside SAJC). Why all the way there? Well, we went to Oishi Japanese Pizza for dinner :) My dad won a $50 voucher and we put it to good use :) There were some very interesting flavours I was hoping to try but in the end, tried Terriyaki Beef, Wasabi Seafood, Unagi & Leek and Chicken Ham & Shitake The Unagi and Leek was good :) Hope to go there soon to try the other flavours. Oh, for cheese lovers (like me) You'll be slightly disappointed that they don't use too much cheese in their cooking :p

And now, monday morning... had a refreshing jog at 7 :)

Now, thanks to all who made this weekend memorable! And I really thank God for bringing me through 22 years, blessing me with wonderful friends :) Hallelujah! :)

P.S. reading this once through, it sounds like some Primary School Compo titled "Your Birthday"! :p