The below story is being taken from page 77-82 of a book called “Have a Little Faith – A True Story” written by Mitch Albom.

“Have a Little Faith is a book about life’s purpose; about losing belief and finding it again; about the divine spark inside us all.

It is one man’s journey, but it’s everyone’s story.”

I really like this part of the book, and that’s why I want to share it here.

In case you are not familiar with Mitch Albom, he is a sports journalist and the writer of these famous books: “Tuesday with Morrie,” “Five people you meet in heaven,” “For one more day.”
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The Greatest Question of All

In any conversation, I was taught, there are at least three parties: you, the other person, and the Lord.

I recalled that lesson on a summer day in the small office when both the Reb and I wore shorts. My bare leg stuck with perspiration to the green leather chair, and I raised it with a small thwock.

The Reb was looking for a letter. He lifted a pad, then an envelope, then a newspaper. I knew he’d never find it. I think the mess in his office was almost a way of life now, a game that kept the world interesting. As I waited, I glanced at the file on the lower shelf the one marked “God." We still hadn`t opened it.

“Ach," he said, giving up.

Can I ask you something?

"Ask away, young scholar," he crowed.

How do you know God exists?

He stopped. A smile crept across his face.

“An excellent question.”

He pressed his fingers into his chin.

And the answer? I said

“First, make the case against Him.”

Okay, I said, taking his challenge. How about this? We live in a world where your genes can be mapped, where your cells can be copied, where your face can be altered. Heck, with surgery, you can go from being a man to being a woman. We have science to tell us of the earth’s creation; rocket probes explore the universe. The sun is no longer a mystery. And the moon—which people used to worship? We brought some of it home in a pouch, right?

“Go on,” he said.

So why, in such a place, where the once-great mysteries have been solved, does anyone still believe in God or Jesus or Allah or a Supreme Being of any kind? Haven’t we outgrown it? Isn’t it like Pinocchio, the puppet? When he found he could move without his strings, did he still look the same way at Geppetto?
The Reb tapped his fingers together.

“That’s some speech."

You said make a case.

“Ah.”

He leaned in. "Now. My turn. Look, if you say that science will eventually prove there is no God, on that I must differ. No matter how small they take it back, to a tadpole, to an atom, there is always something they can’t explain, something that created it all at the end of the search.

"And no matter how far they try to go the other way—to extend life, play around with the genes, clone this, clone that, live to one hundred and fifty—at some point, life is over. And then what happens? When life comes to an end?"

I shrugged.

“You see?"

He leaned back. He smiled.

"When you come to the end, that’s where God begins."

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Many great minds have set out to disprove God’s existence. Sometimes, they retreat to the opposite view. C. S. Lewis, who wrote so eloquently of faith, initially wrestled with the very concept of God and called himself “the most dejected and reluctant convert in all of England." Louis Pasteur, the great scientist, tried to disprove a divine existence through facts and research; in the end, the grand design of man convinced him otherwise.

A spate of recent books had declared God a fool’s notion, hocus-pocus, a panacea for weak minds. I thought the Reb would find these offensive, but he never did. He understood that the journey to belief was not straight, easy, or even always logical. He respected an educated argument, even if he didn’t agree with it.

Personally, I always wondered about authors and celebrities who loudly declared there was no God. It was usually when they were healthy and popular and being listened to by crowds. What happens, l wondered, in the quiet moments before death? By then, they have lost the stage, the world has moved on. If suddenly, in their last gasping moments, through fear, a vision, a late enlightenment, they change their minds about God, who would know?

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The Reb was a believer from the start, that was clear, but I also knew that he was not crazy about some things God allowed on this earth. He had lost a daughter, many years ago. That had shaken his world. And he regularly cried after visiting once—robust members of the congregation who now lay helpless in hospital beds.

“Why so much pain?” he would say, looking to the heavens. “Take them already. What is the point?”

I once asked the Reb that most common of faith questions; why do bad things happen to good people? It had been answered countless times in countless ways; in books, in sermons, on Web sites, in tear-filled hugs. The Lord wanted her with him . . . He died doing what he loved . . . She was a gift . . .This is a test . . .

I remember a family friend whose son was struck with a terrible medical affliction. After that, at any religious ceremony—•even a wedding•-I would see the man out in the hallway, refusing to enter the service. "I just can’t listen to it anymore,” he would say. His faith had been lost.

When I asked the Reb, Why do bad things happen to good people?, he gave none of the standard answers. He quietly said, “No one knows." I admired that. But when I asked if that ever shook his belief in God, he was firm.

“I cannot waver," he said.

Well, you could, if you didn’t believe in something all-powerful.

"An atheist,” he said.

Yes.

“And then I could explain why my prayers were not answered.”

Right.

He studied me carefully. He drew in his breath.

“I had a doctor once who was an atheist. Did I ever tell you about him?"

No.

“This doctor, he liked to jab me and my beliefs. He used to schedule my appointments deliberately on Saturdays, so I would have to call the receptionist and explain why, because of my religion, that wouldn’t work."

Nice guy, I said.

"Anyhow, one day, I read in the paper that his brother had died. So I made a condolence call.”

After the way he treated you?

"In this job," the Reb said, "you don’t retaliate."

I laughed.

"So I go to his house, and he sees me. I can tell he is upset.

I tell him I am sorry for his loss. And he says, with an angry face, 'I envy you.’

“’'Why do you envy me?’ I said.

“ ‘Because when you lose someone you love, you can curse God. You can yell. You can blame him. You can demand to know why. But I don’t believe in God. I’m a doctor! And I couldn’t help my brother!’

“He was near tears. ‘Who do I blame?’ he kept asking me. ‘There is no God. I can only blame myself.’ "

The Reb’s face tightened, as if in pain.

“That,” he said, softly, “is a terrible self-indictment."

Worse than an unanswered prayer?

“Oh yes It is far more comforting to think God listened and said no, than to think that nobody’s out there."


Page 77-82, Have a Little Faith – A True Story, Mitch Albom

I want my breakfast served at “eight”, with ham and eggs upon the plate;
A well-broiled steak I’ll eat at “one”; and dine again when day is done.

I want an ultramodern home, and in each room a telephone;
Soft carpets, too, upon the floors, and pretty drapes to grace the doors.

A cosy place of lovely things, like easy chairs and inner springs,
And then I’ll get a small TV - of course, “I’m careful what I see.”

I want my wardrobe, too, to be of neatest, finest quality.
With latest style of suit and vest, why shouldn’t Christians have the best?

But then the Master I can hear, in no uncertain voice, so clear,
“I bid you come and follow Me, the lonely Man of Galilee.”

“Birds of the air have made their nest, and foxes in their holes find rest;
But I can offer you no bed; no place have I to lay My head.”

In shame I hung my head and cried. How could I spurn the Crucified?
Could I forget the way He went, the sleepless nights in prayer He spent?

For forty days without a bit, alone He fasted day and night;
Despised, rejected - on he went, and did not stop till veil He rent.

A man of sorrows and of grief, no earthly friend to bring relief -
“Smitten of God,” the prophet said - Mocked, beaten, bruised, His blood ran red.

If He be God and died for me, no sacrifice too great can be
For me, a mortal man, to make; I’ll do it all for Jesus’ sake.

Yes, I will tread the path He trod. No other way will please my God;
So, henceforth, this my choice shall be, my choice for all eternity.

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by Bill McChesney

This poem, entitled My Choice, was written by Bill McChesney around 1960 at the age of 25 in the World Evangelization Magazine.

Bill McChesney was a missionary in the Congo in Africa. He was brutally murdered at the age of 28 along with hundreds of other missionaries by the rebels in the Stanleyville area. He had been beaten on a truck and his back was bleeding. Then he was speared to death by the “Simbas.”

This poem has been a blessing for me and what could be more gratifying than sharing it to the people I always regard as my brothers and sisters in Christ.

Blessing shared is blessing doubled.
Burden shared is burden halved.

Hope you are blessed by it. :)

I'm sorry for being MIA for the last couple of months. Honestly there was a culture shock going on because I didn't thought it would be that hard to go back to the Singaporean culture which is quite fast paced.

Meanwhile, I came across this below article which is quite inspiring to me and he will be coming to Singapore for the APEC CEO Summit and will be one of the keynote speaker in the event. He will also talk at the Trinity Theological College Singapore about his book because he is also a minister. I'll be there and if I don't forget, I'll post something about it after I attend it on 12 November 2009.

See you around.

Source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article6571529.ece

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The banker with God on his side

Are Christian values at odds with the discredited world of banking? Not according to Stephen Green, the church minister who’s head of HSBC

by Ruth Gledhill
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Pope Benedict XVI is about to publish a radical new document on social and economic affairs, Caritas in veritate or Love in Truth, in which he is expected to challenge the financial and economic models that he believes are responsible for the financial crisis in the West. He will draw on the full history of the Church’s social teaching to emphasise again the abiding theme of the “common good”. By contrast, the Church of England, which does not even have the recession in a slot for debate at its General Synod in York next month, seems to have left it up to Stephen Green, the chairman of the HSBC bank, to set the moral lead for the nation.

His new book, Good Value: Reflections on Money, Morality and an Uncertain World, is a detailed analysis of the ethical and moral issues arising from the present economic crisis. It is not remotely didactic and it is mercifully free from the self-righteous pomposity that you might expect from a banker who is also an ordained clergyman.

Green is an NSM, a non-stipendiary minister or a “Not Short of Money”, as they have been described. As a result, he is able to mediate between the god of money, our society’s natural deity, and the biblical pretender to that role, the Christian God, from an elevated position — the 42nd floor of the HSBC building in Canada Square at Canary Wharf, East London.

“The banking industry has not covered itself in glory, to say the least, in recent years,” he admits at his penthouse office. “But I think that’s quite a different thing to saying that all banking is corrupt or is there for personal enrichment. It’s not true. What’s more, you can’t have a smoothly functioning modern economy without efficient, effective, well-run banking.” That said, Green acknowledges several times that “there are plenty of lessons to be learnt” and to fix “the breakdown of trust” that is now pervasive across business will require a lot of hard graft.

The industrious message and the almost Victorian rectitude and probity of what he says is reinforced by our surroundings. The 60-year-old’s office oozes asceticism. Images of working-class life adorn its walls. Admittedly, they are original Lowry paintings, but one bears on its back the £35 price tag for which it was acquired by a parsimonious banker many years ago.

Green admits that the underlying issue of “for want of a better word, morality in the markets” needs to be addressed. Like John Bercow, the newly elected Speaker, praising the “upright, decent, honourable” majority in the Commons, or police commissioners rooting around for those few bad apples in the barrel, the HSBC chairman says that he believes “more than 90 per cent of people working in banks have been doing a perfectly honest solid job”. He concedes that “a relatively small number of people were involved in the areas of excess and greed”.

“There was a culture, there was a climate that developed where it’s as if you would say to yourself, ‘If there’s a contract, if it’s legal, if there’s a market, then I’ll do the deal, I don’t have to ask any questions, I don’t have to ask whether it’s right or suitable’. And I do think that we need to get back to that sense of what’s right and suitable and not merely, here’s something that’s a profitable transaction.”

How do we find these elusive rogue bankers, and hold them to account? The answer, apparently, is quite technical. “One way of putting this is that we employ 330,000 people roughly speaking around the world. No senior management group, no board, can guarantee the mode of behaviour in every country, every time zone, every time there’s a transaction with a customer — you can’t set rules that guarantee all the right behaviour all the time. You certainly can’t personally supervise the right behaviour all of the time. You have to make sure there’s a standard of integrity, a standard of culture, a standard of commitment that informs recruitment decisions, that informs training and development programmes, that informs the way people are appraised and rewarded too. This is lots and lots of detailed work and it’s consistent reinforcement. This is the Forth Bridge exercise with a vengeance.

“One of the things that the Christian faith perspective does tell you is that nothing is perfect and that we all know that for any institution any individual — that includes the Church, needless to say. This is about shades of grey.”

Green remains wary of excessive regulation and cites St Paul, who spoke of the limits of the law. “He may have meant this in a slightly different context, but the point is a very well-taken one. No amount of rule making can ensure that the spirit’s there. Some rules may well be necessary but they are never going to be sufficient.”

This is Green’s second book. The first, Serving God? Serving Mammon? was an explicitly Christian book written by a man trying to answer the question of whether a person can, with integrity, have faith and be working in the financial markets. “I don’t think there’s anything different about being in a bank or other kinds of business or in the public sector,” he says. “The fact is if you are where you are and you do have a sense that you have got whatever resources, talents, whatever, the question does stare you in the face: ‘How am I going to contribute to the common good?’ We all, I think, face that question.”

When faced with the question himself, Green’s answer wasn’t simply financial, although he gives away a large proportion of his £1.25 million salary (he and all HSBC directors waived their bonuses last year). He also talks of “servant leadership”, as it is known as in the Church. This, draws on the image of the “servant king” in which the best rulers regard themselves as at the service of their people. It is fundamental to the concept of service in work, an ethic that theologians from the Pope down believe is crucial to the common good.Green thinks “service leadership” might be a better way of putting it for his industry, which he admits has fallen woefully short. “We’ve all become painfully aware of it in the past couple of years.”

Although HSBC received no government cash and said publicly that it can envisage no circumstances in which it will need to accept such help, it wasn’t unscathed by the credit crunch. Its acquisition of the US sub-prime lenders Household International in 2003 was an expensive mistake, especially for the 6,000 people made redundant earlier this year. Green, though, defends his “colleagues in America who’ve borne the brunt of this”, and praises them for the way in which they addressed and tackled the issue once it was recognised. “We don’t feel that this was inappropriate business. I don’t feel that we’ve got any apologies to make for the way in which we faced up to that problem. Indeed, I’m actually rather proud of the institution.”

In spite of the parable of the rich man condemned to eternity in Hades while the beggar Lazarus goes to bliss in Paradise, Christ is more sympathetic to the predicament of the rich than is often thought. Green does not want to address what Christ would think of where we are now.

“It is rather presumptuous to answer the question. Any reasonable reading of the Gospels will tell you that Christ was not automatically hostile to people who are in wealthy occupations.” In the Bible, the rich young man went away “sorrowful” when Jesus told him to give all he had to the poor. Green argues in his book that for the affluent, the biblical practice of tithing, or giving 10 per cent, is “not nearly enough”. As a litmus test, he suggests giving that is both material and “feels like real sacrifice”. And he speaks of the example he has witnessed of people who have tried out the St Francis prayer, “to give as to receive”, and discovered it works. “You hear this phrase all the time: ‘I want to give something back to the community’. It’s an interesting phrase because it bespeaks a sense that somewhere in the person is a recognition that there’s an obligation that he or she owes. That the wealth has imposed an obligation on them, a responsibility on them. Then people can either face their responsibility constructively and with enthusiasm even. Or there are people who don’t. And I think I would argue that the way of spiritual enrichment is to face that challenge and not to duck it.” It may be the way of spiritual enrichment but the question remains whether other, less God-fearing, financiers will ever see the light.

He admits in a rare unguarded moment, “One of my daughters once said, ‘Dad, you are a man of the Nineties, which I thought doesn’t sound too bad, until I realised she meant the 1890s.” Green is personally “well formed” as Christians say, having done a retreat on Mount Athos, and being familiar with the work of Marx, Frankl and most important philosophers, theologians, economists and political writers of the recent and not-so-recent past. One passage that leaps out of his book is where he talks of money in terms of Faust and the demon Mephistopheles.

“No, I don’t believe money is evil, of course I don’t. I believe in the economist’s definition. But as St Paul said, the love of money is the root of all evil. I think that’s probably going some, but it’s clearly a significant temptation and distortion. The rich young man’s story tells you, not that money is, per se, evil, but that you can become spiritually obsessed by it. And there’s ample evidence of that.”

Good Value: Reflections on Money, Morality and an Uncertain World by Stephen Green is published by Allen Lane at £25.

Di tengah gegap gempita perayaan kemerdekaan Republik Indonesia yang ke-64, saya teringat akan perkataan Presiden pertama dan pendiri negara kita tercinta, Ir. Soekarno, "Bangsa yang besar adalah bangsa yang menghargai jasa pahlawannya." Sayangnya, kita tahu jelas bahwa yang beliau maksud dengan kata "menghargai" mempunyai makna yang luas dan dalam.

Saya percaya bahwa Kemerdekaan adalah kemewahan yang dibeli dengan darah para pahlawan. Perjuangan dan pengorbanan mereka lah yang membuat kita semua dapat mencicipi hidup seperti ini. Setidaknya Anda dapat menikmati internet untuk dapat membaca tulisan ini. Apa jadinya bila kemerdekaan yang diproklamasikan pada tanggal 17 Agustus 1945 hanyalah sebuah halusinasi bangsa kita?

Sayangnya bangsa ini telah hidup dengan layaknya menghalusinasikan kemerdekaan hasil perjuangan tersebut.

Tiga alinea pertama Mukadimah Undang-Undang Dasar 1945 dengan jelas mengatakan:

Bahwa sesungguhnya Kemerdekaan itu ialah hak segala bangsa dan oleh sebab itu, maka penjajahan di atas dunia harus dihapuskan, karena tidak sesuai dengan peri-kemanusiaan dan peri-keadilan.

Dan perjuangan kemerdekaan Indonesia telah sampailah kepada saat yang berbahagia dengan selamat sentausa mengantarkan rakyat Indonesia ke depan pintu gerbang kemerdekaan Negara Indonesia yang merdeka, bersatu, berdaulat, adil dan makmur.

Atas berkat rahmat Tuhan Yang Maha Kuasa dan dengan didorongkan oleh keinginan luhur, supaya berkehidupan kebangsaan yang bebas, maka rakyat Indonesia menyatakan dengan ini kemerdekaannya.

Sudahkah perjuangan kemerdekaan Indonesia sampai ke depan pintu gerbang kemerdekaan bila kita menggunakan standar yang dicetuskan oleh konstitusi negara kita sendiri?


Teman-teman, kitalah generasi penerus bangsa ini dan kepada kitalah bangsa ini akan diwariskan.

Sampai kapan kemerdekaan terus menjadi sesuatu yang diperdagangkan oleh para koruptor, dan dipermainkan oleh pemerintahan yang tak bertanggung jawab?

Saya berani bilang, sampai kita sadar bahwa bukan hanya mereka yang salah, kita pun juga.
Kitalah yang bertanggung jawab atas semua itu.

Lalu apa bedanya kita dengan mereka?
Tidak ada, jika kita memilih diam.