Every Once In A While Blog

I have turned 22. I don’t feel 22. But then again, how does being 22 feel like? I dunno, coz I’ve never been 22. So actually, I probably am feeling 22 right know but don’t know it coz I’ve never been 22 before. Hmmm…

The past year has been full. Full of memories. Full of experiences. Full of struggles. Full of God’s sustaining grace. I read my diary entry for my 21st birthday. The verse i wrote down was Ps. 139:18 - "When I awake, I am still with you." Indeed for the past year, everytime I awoke, I am still with God (and He with me).    

At EXCO Planning and Retreat, at one of the devotions we read John 3:30 - "He must become greater; I must become less." The funny thing is, someone else from church also sent me a birthday message accompanied by that same verse. It strikes me coz of the word increase. As my age increases, He must increase, I must become less.

Here’s to another year…I am Esmond. And I am 22 years young!

"Groves at this time sank into periods of profound introspection, depressed at his inability to rejoice in the Lord. He thought how easy it had been to appear an outstanding Christian when blessed with a loving wife, a comfortable home, a rewarding profession and a stimulating circle of godly friends; and how hard to maintain any Christian spirit at all when stripped bare and exposed to a thousand weaknesses. "My heart," he confessed, "is very sad to think how profitless a servant I have been." Mercifully, the black moods were interspersed with more hopeful thoughts: "The sense of my Father’s love and Saviour’s sympathy has never been taken from me amidst all my trials. Nay, I do feel that the Lord is fitting me, by suffering and separation, for the work to which he has called me."
- excerpt from Father of Faith Missions: The Life and Times of Anthony Norris Groves.

Anthony Groves was an early missionary of the Brethren movement. A missionary in Baghdad, the above passage, taken from his biography, happened after he had endured a bad flood, lost his wife to the plague and learned that his friends from another place called Aleppo won’t be joining him in the mission fields of Baghdad.