Market Trip

This morning I had an opportunity to go shopping at the market with my mom for the first time since last two years. I am not fully awake right now since I went to sleep around 2 o'clock last night and had to get up at 6; but I feel the urge to write this note.

We took a Song Taew truck to Nonthaburi market, the busiest place I have ever seen in the morning like that. Vendors after vendors, shops after shops were opening to welcome their customers. People, mostly in their PJs, were swarming in and out to run their early errands. Sellers' bellowing voices trying to get attention from shopppers, street dogs wandering..sniffing for left-over food, buyers hurriedly rush from one aisle to the other to get what they need and Thai Buddhists kneeling down...receiving blessing from a simple looking monk really made me overwhelmed. I have never been good in being in such a crowded, busy place with loud noise like this anyway, so it could probably have been another overwhelming trip. But the truth is...I kinda felt a little different this time.

While I was waiting around for my mom, a group of people caught my attention. A group of five ladies bowing down their heads, kneeling down on the stenched wet dirty floor, holding their hands in a wai form in front of a young monk with such stone, straight, emotionless face made me planted where I was standing.

These folks were joyless! They were hopelessly looking for ways to heaven, trying in vain to do good things...to earn merits...while knowing too well that it may not be the right path. The scene captivated my soul, and my heart was being squeezed so tightly that I thought I was going to collapse. It looks to me that the monk was the only brightest hope they could ever find...and try to cling to... before they started their days living in sins. How depressing that would be when you are not even sure of your salvation? "Do good things, girl, and you will go to heaven."...that's something I had been told since I was a little child. Everything is vanity and grasping for the wind.

Oh! My ultimate desire is to see my countrymen repent and receive Salvation. My dream is to be Jesus' hand to help the poor and the orphans in this place, the country that has been called, "the Land of Freedom". I want to see Thailand being the chosen nation. But I am so little. I am not much. Yet I really want to help. The spiritual warfare is marching on, but I am still stuck with sins. "Lord, Your strength is made perfect in my weakness. Deliver me from sins. Arm me with Your armor. And make me selfless, Lord Jesus. I am Your clay."

Freedom

While everything on GES campus seems to fall into the rhythm of peacefulness and quietness, the limbs of my soul are struggling to waddle out of the void of turmoil. Restlessness daily comes knocking on my door. And all i could do has been to welcome it with unwillingness.

Restless to follow God's call eventhough being clueless what it is.
Restless to begin the new journey eventhough the road looks so dark.
Restless to take the adventure with the One eventhough it may be dangerous.
Restless to be free from this worldly cage.

I was watching a movie called, "the Ultimate Gift" the other night. It is about the value of gifts that one can find. One phrase that completely blew me away was, "free to dream". Somewhere along the way, it seems like I have lost my dream. I have dropped it for a while. Then it came to me...Jesus came all the way from heaven to earth to SET US FREE, to give us FREEDOM. It is hard for my limitedness to totally understand the whole concept of freedom; but after all these years I have had with Him, I know that to be free in Him is to wholeheartedly and tremblingly rely on the Redeemer. Oh-yes, I don't even want to believe what I just wrote, yet the truth remains.

Often I have heard people ask, "If God is really almighty and sovereign, why didn't He stop Eve from sinning?" And the answer would be, "Well, because God didn't make us a robot. We were fearfully and beautifully made according to His image. He put mind and spirit into us. And He gives us choices. He gives us freedom so that we may glorify Him through this freedom." And I agree. A lot of people, and even I myself, sometimes try to put aside God and venture on our own. Eventually, I always find myself sitting on the floor helplessly, tears streaming down like waterfall and crying out to Jesus for help.

"I will walk about in freedom for I have sought out your precepts.", said David. There is freedom in Jesus. Be free to dance, free to sing, free to shout, free to think and free to dream. There's this phrase, "Nothing is free in this world", but I'm sure there is when you are in Him.

Mink

"For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God." Romans 8:20-21