A New Calling....

It's been a 2 weeks wait. The telephone call finally came this morning. When I recognized the voice at the other end, I greeted her with a voice aplomb of self confidence. But in truth, I was nervous and faint hearted for fear of bad news. So the brave front was actually borne more out of a need to disguise this shortcoming.

The lady at the other end of the line jested when she asked which news I wanted to hear first. The good or the bad? Ooops! Not good. Not good at all. I thought about it for a nanosecond. Then it hit me. Waitaminit, waitaminit. Her statement laid the grounds of the possibility of bad news but yet, it reeked with the hint of good?

Ahhhh....almost kena conned leh. Hehe... :)

And so it was with good news that my new week awoke to. That come forth the new month of February, I shall be setting off on a new journey for myself and my life. A path where I will finally get to answer and serve the Lord's calling. As Soo Choo, my friend and soon-to-be new colleague would echo, "HIS KINGDOM COME. HIS WILL BE DONE."

So now it's cast in stone. A new milestone in my life will be marked. A new career with a new direction and new benchmarks. I have spent almost two decades of my working life in the private sector doing things and acquiring knowledge, which for the most parts may probably not have any bearings on my new vocation. Taking that into consideration, and in discounting those unneeded tools from the equation, I now have to believe that it is the remaining few skills left in my possession that will have a practical usefulness on how I navigate the waters of this new and alien territory that I chart. Mien Gott, the Lord has surely gone about preparing me for this task in a funny but wrong way. Hmmm... I may well be forgiven if I accused Him for deliberately designing humour for His own pleasure at my expense. That also loosely translates to saying that our God is a bona fide joker. That He laughs heartily at the end when He discovers that He has excelled Himself when He successfully pulls off certain stunts on His servants.

:P

Heh! But I too jest when I wrote the above. Maybe it's the warped sense of humour that some say I have but as I reflected on those very same words at the second reading, it did dawn upon me that it was funny. At the same time, it also simultaneously occurred unto me that maybe I may have read Him wrong. Maybe God was not the joker I had made Him out to be. Maybe this time He did the reverse? That He inverted the position. That this time He had sacrificially assumed the mantle of comedic clown for my pleasure instead; albeit, one where His ulterior intent for me is good.

Puzzled??? Here's why I thought what I thought and it goes like this.

Maybe God wanted me to experience all of what I've experienced in my life, thus far, to adequately prepare me to assume my new role in the overall big picture. And the greatest lesson He had willed for me out of this exercise was to learn not to lament on my journey of the past but rather, to happenstance on the understanding that it was all a pre-designed pathway to learning and understanding futility, and more importantly, to acknowledge and then to surrender to it. And when all of this is done, I am to then sit back and take in the simple joy of discovering how to laugh alongside Him at the oxymoronic idiosyncrasies that I had created for myself the last 43 years. At this juncture, I had another epiphany. For as I learn to laugh at myself in this process, maybe I may just be lucky enough to discover the godly grace that He means for my life and I.

Thank you for Your faithfulness, God, my Lord. I serve willingly in Your kingdom.

Amen.