I just finished reading an entire book in one sitting. "Tuesdays with Morrie". Its pretty well known. Ironically, I only got down to reading it cos I ended up having an afternoon to kill, and was walking past a bookshop. So I decided to see what the big hoo-ha was all about. Its a fascinating read, with all the feel-good ingredients that you'd want to find, inspirations about what's really important in life, aphorisms that you'd find in "Chicken Soup For The Soul", and for me, a subsumed point of how life can start all over again even at the age of 37. Right before I started on the book, I was listening to songs such as Iris, Sad Clown, When God Ran... etc. Songs of either loneliness, or of redemption. And Mitch Albom, the author of the book, found redemption once again in the last months of an old man in his seventies.

Ironically, I'm now in the process of writing a paper about the search for meaning in life. And when I close the book, I find myself once again stuck between two worlds. One of cynicism that chooses to see how everything can grey itself out, where things become a lot more complicated than the simple aphorisms that Morrie espoused in his dying days, or I can be a lot more naive and simply accept that its possible to live out those principles, and that life doesn't have to be as complicated as we make it out to be. On a good day in church, I'm the naive person. On a bad day, I sneer at the prescriptivism of those values, while inwardly wistfully holding out to some hope that what they claim is possible, if I could but see things differently.

What is it about people who can live out lives of such simplicity, and still be able to touch people's lives at a level that I can't understand? Last night Weixiu told me that people in church find me hard to understand, that I think too much. I shudder to think how my church people would react to half the Arts Faculty in NUS. Me? Half the time I hardly think, but just throw things off the top of my head without much processing, operating on an instinct that's more often way off course than not. And yet, I have to admit that I believe I think more about life than most people in church, including Weixiu. Yet at the end of the day, she's the one who's probably managed to make a positive difference in people's lives than I have been. People come to me only when they're in deep shit. People go to her all the time. I'm like a pill that some of my friends pop when they have a headache, after which I'm put back into the cold storage to await the next time I'm needed. People like to reach for hope, and she gives them that. Most of the time, I prefer to hide behind a mask of cynicism, while she manages to be unabashed by her brand of optimism. I guess that's why most people go to her.

Not that this is a self-pitying session, or a time to renew my bitching. I'm just genuinely confused. Does this world have to be as complicated as I make it out to be? Was Jesus' world really as complicated as the way I made it out. Was His mind really thinking of, and aware of the things that I seem to think? Half the time when Paul's in his moods, and he poses his questions in the bleakest manner possible, was that real? Or issit actually possible to be so concerned with Kingdom Matters that all else, will like the song says "And the things of this earth will grow strangely dim, In the light of His glory and Grace".

Nor is this cos I'm feeling down. Hey, anything in the light of Paul's problems, will also grow strangely dim. Grins. And there's my analogy. Is it possible for my mind to be so preoccupied with what's on God's heart, that all else, that I now seem to not be able to help but see, will seem unimportant, and of no weight? So that all the Christian axioms will actually seem more real and plausible than the worldly troubles and complications that seem to engulf everything.

TURN YOUR EYES UPON JESUS
O soul, are you weary and troubled
No light in the darkness you see
There's a light for a look at the Savior
And life more abundant and free

Turn your eyes upon Jesus
Look full in His wonderful face
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim
In the light of His glory and grace

Through death into life everlasting
He passed, and we follow Him there
Over us sin no more hath dominion
For more than conquerors we are

His Word shall not fail you - He promised
Believe Him and all will be well
Then go to a world that is dying
His perfect salvation to tell