Upsurge of Waves of Change

Change is inevitable they say. But abrupt changes are so jarring and sometimes even traumatic. You wake up in a good mood one day, start the day productively then a call comes that you didn’t know would change your life in an instant. A dear friend was hurled through the air by a speeding motorcycle and the prognosis does not look good. You immediately rush to the ER where you are greeted by a throng of people from both sides of the incident; the victim and the “perpetrator.” Your friend’s head is bandaged, one eye is shut , swelling, and purple due to the impact. He is dizzy, slightly incoherent and parched but cannot take in water.

He suddenly lurches forward and vomits blood. You look on helplessly. It is moments like this you know that your hands are tied but it can be folded, in prayer. it is these vulnerable moments where you realise that there is a lot of wisdom from the words of the wisest man in the Bible; it is better to be in the house of mourning than in the house of feasting. Suddenly, everything else looks trivial and survivable. Just moments ago you were thinking of what color to paint your room and now you are praying hard that the young doctor knows what to do and that how you wish the transporting ambulance would hurry up.

Change is indeed inevitable. Just last year, I was promoted (finally) and this year, we got the bad news that the future of our Agency looks bleak. Our so-called job security is under threat. A law titled for some other purposes sneakily put in anti-farmers’ and anti-employees’ provisions that are wounding and even cut major veins that would ultimately lead the Agency as well as this particular sector, bleed dry. 

Well, this is a lengthy way to say that  our only safety in uncertainty lies in the hand of a constant and a sure God. When we follow His will, obey His commands, we are assured of peace. Peace in the midst of a storm. Peace in a chaotic world where evil runs free and law breaking is seen as fashionable. Peace in a sea of ever shifting loyalties and allegiances. Peace in persecution. Peace in problems. 

Ending this is on a triumphant note that that dear friend survived and is recuperating superbly. He did not know that a pain free existence would actually come at the time he was in the most pain, writhing in the trolley bed, and hypersensitive to both lights and sounds. In the same vein, we don’t know what will happen to us as well, two seconds, three minutes, an hour, a day, four months, a year, ten year from now. 

"But like the stars in the vast circuit of their appointed path, God's purposes know no haste and no delay. "

Maybe, just maybe, this period of job insecurity is also God’s way of telling me to join that mission trip I’ve long been unable to because of the demands of my job.