20-22 Covid-19 Daily Reflections

  A friend asked me recently how I find strength and confidence to keep doing what I am doing all of these years. She wanted to know whether I feel tired of listening to people's struggles and problems day after day. For more than 34 years, I have not yet experienced professional and emotional burnout, and I don't intend to. One of the main factors for me is to learn how not to take myself too seriously while taking God's plan for the world with commitment and endurance. I have learned to accept the fact that I will not be able to help everyone and not feel guilty about it. Only God can, and the last time I checked, and I am not Him. One of the verses I read, when things are challenging for me, is 1 Thessalonians 1:3: "We remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ." First, remember that God is with us. That thought gives me a lot of comforts when I have t...

  I am still baffled by the call of some people to either cut down the police budgets or to defund the police altogether. Is it our new approach to democracy and law and order? The rule of law is fundamental in a democracy. I can think of words I can use to describe what is happening, but I won't for the sake of civility and kindness. We live in a time when there is a specific group of people who would not live in the confinement of the law, and they would scream when other people confront them. Nothing is perfect, and our police forces have to get better in equipping and training their people to do their jobs with honor. We cannot live in denial during such a challenging time in our history. But that is not the only institution that needs to go through that process. Our universities have to deal with sexual abuses and the elimination of freedom of speech and learning. Our elected bodies have to deal with more and more complaints about the mistreatment of women and se...

  Broken dreams are part of life. It sounds depressing, but it is true. I have met people who experience broken dreams in their marriages, their careers, their ministries, and their aspiration. We all wish that life would go the way we envision it to be. Somebody told me jokingly a few weeks ago that she would get married if she knew that 2020 would turn out the way it is. Many people I know have experienced broken dreams in 2020. Some have suffered a significant business downturn. Some have experienced unexpected professional change. A few had to give up the plan they had for their weddings. Some discovered that their relationships with some people in their lives are not as good as they thought. Some miss corporate worship because it is a significant part of life. Some want to travel and found themselves traveling within the confinement of their city. Some people say that dreams are bound to be broken. We dream because we think of the impossible things and hope to a...

  When we walk into a room when people are having a lively conversation, and suddenly everyone stops and stays quiet. We know that very moment that they were talking about us. It is not a very comfortable feeling because we want to get mad and yet don't want to give these people too much power over us by doing so. Gossiping is more common than we are willing to acknowledge. We experience that within families, churches, and workplaces. Sometimes gossips take place because we don't dare to face the conflict head-on. One of my favorite Bible verses about avoiding gossiping comes from Ephesians 4:29: "Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear." There is a strong correlation between experiencing the grace of God and building one another up. Sometimes we start a corrupt talk because we find ourselves in disagreement with someone. Gossip has its root in a prideful h...

  We had a rather unsettling experience this week. A truck full of explosives rear-ended our daughter's car on her way to work in Victoria, BC. The appropriate authority is now investigating the accident. I didn't really feel anything until I hang up the phone because I wanted to be sure that she was ok. She is sore and was able to talk to a physician virtually late Thursday. Things could be a lot worse if the truck driver lost control of his vehicle more than he did. We are reminded once more that we cannot take anything for granted. Life can have a sudden change, and none of us is fully prepared for it. It was just good to hear my daughter's voice. It is no longer about having control. It is about receiving a gift. It might not be a bad idea to re-examine our life priorities and see how we have taken people in our life for granted. The first thing I did after that phone call was to call my other two kids just to be sure that they are safe. It was not logical, and yet it s...

    I was walking back to my car after going food shopping and found out that I had misplaced my car keys somewhere in the food court. It was rather frustrating. I sat down by the car and tried to visualize the possible locations. So I went back only to discover that the young woman who cleaned my table had been waiting for me to come back to claim my keys. What a relief? We have keys for many things in order to keep things secure or private. One of the keys that many of us might not think about is one that God needs to have to get inside our hearts. We need to open ourselves up to His love so that He can enter. What would He find? A) A heart that needs to be corrected: We have allowed many evil thoughts to reside within our hearts. That has taken away room for God to stay. We have let life circumstances to erode the promise of God. B) A guarded heart: We damage our hearts by embracing many false promises of the world. We are now dealing a collection of insecure ones. So we ha...

    As the rate of infection increases across Canada, some people begin to think that the "second wave" of the pandemic has started. With the overflowing of "information" in various forms of social media, we have also encountered different responses to this pandemic. I was on the phone with someone who is adamant that the whole thing is a hoax and insisting on sending his daughter to school without a mask. He is not alone. It didn't help when CDC decided to remove its guidance airborne coronavirus transmission. I told my friend that when it comes to COVID 19, there is nothing academic about it. In my immediate and extended families, we have at least 3 cases. I am thankful that no one dies. I know people who have family members died and became part of the statistic. There is nothing hoax about the reality of death. However, the confusion remains. What are we missing? Maybe we are overloaded with information and very light on wisdom. Here is one of ...

Power is a critical aspect of human interaction and organizations. We don't have to search very hard to see the display of various expressions of it.  We see that politics, business, faith-based bodies, family interaction, and personal relationships. Power can appropriate, healthy, and encouraging. However, it can also be destructive and abusive. How we exercise power depends on how we understand ourselves and who God is. We should also be more discerning about how we manage our relationships with others in life. If a leader tells his people that they need to do what he told them because of his position over them, it is an abusive use of his authority. Positional power is power at its weakest form, and it is something a leader has to earn. A leader tends to use that approach toward power and authority when he (she) feels that he (she) can no longer reason with his (her) people. Something has gone seriously wrong in that relationship. Suddenly being defensive and reactive towards w...

  Have you ever tried to fix your appliances at home? I did this past weekend with my OTR microwave. The problem was with the touch control panel. It was not fully responsive. It was not a hard problem to correct but to get to it was another story. To make a long story short, I did fix it. When we consider things that are not going well or not happening in our life, we might discover the real issue is not a complex one. We need to be able to identify the issue and put our fingers on it. That demands more time and attention. Let us have a look at some of the significant events since the first shut down due to COVID 19. A) The mistreatment of our seniors: We have been aware of this problem for many years and COVID 19 simply brought it to the forefront of the news. Somehow the value of being human is slowly downgrading because one can longer work. We have become so superficial and shallow in how we view the worth of a human being. We fail to appreciate the contribution seniors can hav...

  One of the best compliments we can get in our relationships with others when someone says to us that "you are such a faithful friend". We remember our loved ones who died because of their faithfulness. So faithfulness becomes a landmark of who we are with God and with one another. In Hebrews 11:1, it says, "Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see." Somehow there is a correlation between hope, confidence, and faithfulness. What am I hoping for as a Christian? I certainly don't think it is an easy life because of the nature of my faith. My hope rests on the freedom I have to express the convictions of my faith. Someone asked me recently a question about my stand on terminating life in a mother's womb. I shared my conviction based on the belief that life begins at conception, and science has no business to authenticate the beginning of life. She told me that I am going against the majority of Canadians. I told her I ...

  We all have to make hard decisions once in a while. We have to consider many options, many pros and cons, the consequences, the people, the cost, and many more. We might talk to a few people we trust, pray, take time, and ponder. It is not always clear whether you make the right one or not. Since March, I have been responsible for telling many people about the termination of their employment. All of these meetings have their own flavours. People are reacted to the news differently due to the impact on their lives. One thing I know that it is not an easy task for anyone. I meditate on this passage in the Book of Proverbs often during such a time. Proverbs 3:5-6 "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths." Trusting God is a life long lesson. What does it mean to trust God while having to make a hard decision? First, we need to acknowledge that we are not in control...

      I was so happy that my raspberry bushes finally produce some fruits. I was about to give up on the idea of having any this summer. It was indeed a late corp. But it is better later than never.  One of the main aspects of the Christian life is to manifest the fruit of the Holy Spirit. What are they? Here is the list in Galatians 5: 22-23. " But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things, there is no law." When we ponder on these verses, we realize that some of the fruit is late arriving in our life. Some has not yet shown up. We are struggling to love ourselves properly and then fail to love God and others.  Joy is an illusion for us sometimes. It is something to receive and not find. We cannot feel joy because of our burden for the world.  We are not able to find peace within our hearts because we fight against God's desire for us.   We cannot live...

      I have been talking to a lot of people about the notion of God's blessings. We pray for God's provision in our daily life. We ask for forgiveness. We ask for protection. The Hebrew people ask that God will not take away His presence.  God does bless us with His presence. That is one of the reasons why I believe that there is a lot of Motherhood in God. When I pray the Lord's Prayer, the Heavenly Father is the author of all godly, kind, and compassionate Fatherhood and Motherhood. How many of us can recall how our mother's presence manifests both nature and the characteristic of God? It is a lot more meaningful to embrace both the male and the female nature of God. I think we actually would have a skewed image of God if we leave one out. Let us take a look at a couple of verses. In Deuteronomy 32: 11-12, we see that God is described as the mother eagle as she trains her young how to fly by destroying her nest: "Like the eagle that stirs up its n...

  Driving gives me a lot of time to do some thinking and praying. It is one of a few moments in my life that I can be completely alone if I choose to do so. Sometimes my mind takes me back to conversations that I had with people earlier. Sometimes it takes me the different passages of the Bible, and I start to ponder. Here is the account of what happened when I drove to Lethbridge this Wednesday morning. I thought about how the separation of families has been painful for some people I know. Some people I know could not go and visit their kids and grandkids in the US because we are not allowed to travel freely there yet. I could feel the anguish and the frustration in my friend's voice because they cannot see their new grandkids. The emotional longing is hard on them. Then I think about my separation from God and how hard that is for him. My friend has to learn how to see his grandkids via Facebook, and he enjoys these moments with them. What Facebook message would G...

  The Presidential election in the US is less than two months away. The conversations among my brothers, who are living in the US, have been very intense. They don't seem to believe me when I told them this past week that I made a decision many years ago not to align myself with the power of the day because that can bring greater temptation and destruction. I just want to speak on behalf of the oppressed, the poor, the sick, and the isolated. Regardless of the political leadership, my aim stays the same. My opinionated brothers insisted that I ought to have a choice. My choice is to believe that God is bigger than any human democratic outcomes. People make mistakes, so are nations. Yet, the line seems to be very clear in this coming election among some folks. Some believe that it is time for the change of leadership of the presidency. It has become quite personal and hostile, and some might say that the president created that toxic environment for the nation. Scientifi...

I have had to deal with increasing numbers of depression and suicide. There are many reasons for this fact. Isolation is not healthy for us in general because God created us for relationships and community. Isolation sometimes can also give us too much time to listen to the lies in our heads. One of the causes of depression is our addiction to social media. The nature of social comparison: everyone else seems to look so happy in Facebook, and their lives are so more exciting than ours. The nature of envy is creeping in, and we don't even know it. We are not even aware of what we see. It works within our subconsciousness. We are wondering what is wrong with us and why our life is not exciting. If we combine that with whatever existed before the age of social media, life is not something fun to go through. That very feeling happens too many times on the same day. It is emotionally exhausting. Our fear of falling behind: by asking what others have that we don't, it ...

  Everything is taking longer to do. For example, seeing our dentist, going food shopping, going to a coffee shop, buying a book, doing our banking at branch, and many more. The COVID-19 protocol has to be in place everywhere. We have learned to adapt ourselves to these new realities in some ways. However, that has impacted us more than we know. As our regular routines change, we have to become more attentive to more information. We have to pay more attention to our ways of going about things and doing things. Many people feel tired mentally as they cope with these changes. It is more demanding mentally for some people. We begin to sense that our stress level increases. Our driving habit has also changed. People seem to be in a hurry these days. Maybe we feel the pressure to get more done with less time. Speed and the lack of attention are what I have witnessed so far. We have less to do, and yet we feel as if we have less time to do everything somehow. It is intrigui...

  What does it mean to have an equal playing field? What color of one's skin should be to qualify for any government support? It is even more problematic when people can declare whomever they prefer to be in terms of their sexuality, skin colors and many more. Who is going to have to have the authority to say to someone else that you are not ____enough? How far down the line of our genetics code before we are not entitled to such help? Many small business owner folks I know are from some other backgrounds with different skin colors. Why shouldn't they get help? They have been participating in the growth of the economy. Now they are close to bankruptcy because of the pandemic. Are we running a risk of creating another systemic discrimination toward people of other colors by having a special treatment for one group only? Being treated equally is a biblical concept because we are all created in the image of God, and we should cherish one another that way? When we mis...

Wildfires and forest fires can be so detrimental to human health. Two years ago, we had to go through four weeks of not being able to see the sky. The only thing we saw was an enduring thick and massive smoke layer that covered almost the entire Southern Alberta. So my prayers are with people in Northern California, Washington, and Oregon these days. There is also something eerie about the sunrise and the sunset. We see apocalyptic images and feelings dominated by the red and orange glows mixed with some optical effect. It is not a comfortable one for sure. Wildfires and forest fires are threatening. They can be out of control very quickly. Sometimes there is no way of fighting them successfully. We pray and hope for rain and cooler weather. I went to Fort Mc Murray right after the fire in 2016 was over. It was an image of a war-torn city. The devastation is immense as the fire destroyed more than 2400 structures. The majority of people scattered due to the fire...

  We are about entering the Fall season in Calgary. The trees and other vegetations begin to show signs of that. I like the change between seasons. It signifies a transition between the end of one and the beginning of another. Talking to my father last week reminds me of that. Our family is preparing for the final chapter of one generation and for the next generation to anchor the family history and legacy. Last week a mother was talking to me about her kids. She was lamenting about how fast the time has gone by, and how quickly the children have grown up. She was struggling with the change of her identity because the kids don't need her all much. They start spreading their wings and forming their own identities as adults. There is always more than one way of looking at these events in our lives. We can be thankful for the fact that our kids are becoming men and women on their own right, or we feel unsettled that they are going on their own and might not see things the same way we ...

  Some years ago, a political party asked me to consider running for office under their banner. I thought about it long and hard and decided that it is not my calling to run for a public office position. It was intriguing at the time because I was thinking about making a change in my life. I admire good people who want to serve in that capacity because it can be taxing to both personal and family life. The reasons behind my decision have a lot to do with my commitment to both personal ministries and simplicity. During that time, God reminded me that I should not be distracted from the calling that I have received.   It has a lot to do with people in the business. The market place needs a healing presence. It cries for meaningful conversations about the simple message of Jesus, not a simplistic one. It is not a simplistic one because it will demand transformation in the lives of those who want to embrace it. It is simple because it addresses the brokenness of human...

According to the Chinese Zodiac, 2020 is the year of the RAT. It also remains popular in many Asian countries, Vietnam included. I don't believe in the description of each of the animals (there are 12 altogether). Just in case you need to know, I was born in the year of the dog. We always consider it as a form of entertainment when we read the descriptions of different animals in the Chinese Zodiac (rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, goat, monkey, rooster, dog, and pig). I am going to share with you what it says about the year of the RAT by its description and see how God is telling us about ourselves. We are in isolation. We don't go out as much as we used to. We only get out because of necessities. In many ways, we are living hiding in our own rat holes because of this pandemic. Rat is always in hiding. So what can we do about it? Well, we can look at it as hiding or as time dedicated to God and other important people in our lives. We learn how to pray ...

  This past weekend was the Labour Day long weekend. It is usually the last break before everyone starts their "new year" for many people. Schools begin, kids' activity schedules are back in full swing, church programs start, and all of the shopping and preparation have to be complete before school. I used to have fun during the Labour weekend because it is when the CFL has their rivalry games. Needless to say, this new school year starts with all kinds of worries about Covid-19. Churches cannot have regular events. Things do not have the same energy as in previous years. I drove by McMahon Stadium last Friday, and it was just dead. There is no CFL season this year. The common saying we hear often is " nothing is the same". We say that with some degree of regret and resignation. We prefer things to be predictable and stay the same. Have we forgotten what happened since Genesis? Nothing is predictable, and nothing stays the same as for the human rac...

  Zooming has been the keyword for many business meetings. At first, it was new and exciting because it provided us access to people when we could not meet together. However, as the pandemic drags on, many of us begin to experience the "Zoom Fatigue Phenomenon". It is not because we don't want o talk to co-workers or family members. It is just far more tiring than we first anticipated. Why? Nothing can replace seeing people and having a conversation with them in person. It is about growing our relationships with people, and that requires a human touch and real presence. There are feelings that we can only express when we are with one another physically. It is like watching a movie, suddenly there is no sound, and we are trying to make sense of what we are seeing. Our brains have to work a lot harder during a zoom meeting. We see a lot more, and yet we don't have the same comprehension. Being with people mentally and not physically is quite taxing that way. When a zoo...

  Well, the top doctor in Canada, Dr. Theresa Tam, decided to comment on how people can have safe sex during Covid-19. The reaction toward her comments were both cynical and humorous. Sex certainly has many connotations in cultures. Her assessment was made on Sept 2nd, just a few days before universities across the country start their school year. It is rather interesting timing. Here is the exact quote from Dr. Tam: "Sexual health is an important part of our overall health. However, sex can be complicated in the time of COVID-19, especially for those without an intimate partner in their household or whose sexual partner is at higher risk for COVID-19.” Here are some of my thoughts as I read her statement. The notion of sexual health. What is it? Is it like having a steak dinner once in a while to satisfy our desire for red meat? Is it about meeting our sexual urge and need regardless of our personal situation? Maybe her statement assumes that we agree with what sexual health shou...