The Wilful Sunflower

Today seems to be the day for surprises via the Internet. I checked into my site and found a note from a girl called Belle in my guestbook. She said she'd chanced upon my blog and has been reading it from time to time. Wow, I never thought my musings and misadventures would be interesting to anybody else, LOL. Thanks Belle, if you're reading this, I want you to know you made my day. :)

Well now, remember I said I was off to camp over the weekend? I don't know what to say about the camp. It was wonderful, but not in the conventional sense: there wasn't like tons of teachings and wonderful new revelations. Instead, it was more of a confirmation of things that I've already been thinking about and pondering, sort of like a gentle nudge from God saying, "You're on the right track, and I'm with you all the way, My daughter. I'm pleased with you."

On the first night, the camp speakers revealed that neither of them had had any communication with each other prior to the camp, yet when they both arrived at the place, they discovered that God had led each of them to the exact same passages of Scripture. It reminded me of the quote, "A coincidence is when God performs a miracle and decides to remain anonymous"! There was just such a sense of God's purposes coming together, that He was in control, and that He was going to do something new in our lives at that camp. I could feel that sense of divine destiny.

We were told that we wouldn't be given any answers, only questions. The speakers encouraged us to seek God and search Scripture for any answers we might need. But they brought up some relevant points.

One of the things addressed was spending time with God to read the Bible and pray (popularly known as "quiet time"). The speaker said that QT has evolved into just another item on a Christian's "to-do" list, something we do and then tick off the list, and feel that we're "good Christians". If we don't do it, we feel guilty. But in fact, QT should stem from a deep hunger for God and a desire to be closer to Him.

This is something I myself have come to realise in my walk with God. Mom calls the Bible "God's love letters to us". She says that if she misses QT, she feels that her day is not complete, and she misses that time of closeness with God. In this, at least, I want to be like her. Oh, to have that intimate personal relationship with our Father!

Also, the speaker discussed how easily the world's values infiltrate our value system, until sometimes the values we (or the church) hold onto are not truly godly values anymore. Like, you know, the pressure to get married because your biological clock is ticking. He asked, do we ever stop and think Who created the biological clock in the first place? And ambition... it's such a normal thing to want to rise up in the world and be successful; we end up looking askance at a person who's content with what he is and what he has. We think he must be lazy or de-motivated, that there's something wrong with him because he doesn't want to be at the top.

There's nothing wrong with striving for excellence, but I also believe in divine placement. If I'm in the place where God wants me to be, and I'm content, why should anyone try to make me feel dissatisfied with where I'm at?

Recently I was paying a visit to one of my friends whose father is a prominent lawyer with political ambitions. This man is so ambitious that he forced his son (my friend) to read law, so that the son could take over the practice and he (the dad) would be free to enter politics full-time. Well, the political party he's involved with happens to own the paper I work for.

"When I run for election, you could help me with some stuff," he suggested. "Your company's entire board of directors are my close friends. If you help me, I'll be able to introduce you to them. Once they know you are one of us, promotion will come easier and faster. They'll never promote you to key posts if they don't know you."

The thing is, in this business, if you keep moving up, you'll end up being an editor, handing out assignments, checking the journalists' work... becoming more and more involved in the day-to-day running of the paper, instead of writing. And I want to write. I really don't want to move so high up that I'm no longer doing what I enjoy doing!

I know most people equate success with getting to the top. But that really isn't my definition of success. It's never been my ambition to be top of my profession and earn heaps of money. In fact, (*shock, horror*) I've never thought in terms of having a career at all. Since I was young, the only thing I've wanted is to fall in love, marry, and have a family. A job is just a necessity – you need money in order to live. But the REALLY important things in life are people, not money and career.

I know, I know, I'm hopelessly idealistic. And, of course, old-fashioned. heheh.