The First Two Weeks

My laptop’s out of commission for the moment and languishing in the cold confines of the NUS Computer Centre, which kind of explains why I haven’t posted a new entry for some time.

All this time I’ve been picturing this poor, un-updated blog to be gathering cyber-dust on the cyber-shelf.

Oh well.

As it is, I’ve just finished my first two weeks of real teaching in Cedar Girls’. The thing I really appreciate about working life which I never ever hear mentioned by people sharing about is the discipline that is enforced upon you. Being a teacher and having to wake up at a five something in the morning everyday and then ending your day around three to five in the afternoon can be quite debilitating without some discipline in your life. I guess having been ill-disciplined most of my life, I appreciate having some sort of backbone to my time.

The challenge for me and, I believe for all working stiffs, is never for that backbone to be your job. Sure, I have to be in school by 7.15am and the earliest I can leave is when lessons end officially but that stipulation does not rule my time.

I get up at 5.15am and 5.30am on alternate days to get in a bit of exercise before school but primarily to be quiet before my Father and to start my day seeking His face and crying out for the Presence (as He is referred to in 1 Samuel in the Bible) to be with me. Trust me, this isn’t easy when your body is screaming for more sleep and the rest of Singapore is sleeping snugly in their comfy beds.

I have tried not seeking His face before and going through that whole day without the assurance of and sensitivity to His manifest presence but that harrowing experience has taught me, as has every single moment that I have not sought Him earnestly and whole-heartedly, that I simply cannot afford to do that.

In my personal experience especially, I have found I simply cannot function apart from Him, or perhaps to put in Jesus’ words, He is the vine and i am a branch; I cannot do anything apart from Him.

The world seems duller, more threatening. Fears gnaw unceasingly at my heart all the day long. My students seem more restless and hostile. I teach without joy and without life. I am starved of inspiration. I am drained. Life becomes drudgery.

I am too weak to go without His strength.

I am too helpless to go without His outstretched arm.

I am too meager in my abilities to go without His power.

I am too prone to wander to go without His love.

I am too poor in spirit to go without His Spirit.

I am too fallen to go without His glory.

This is a lesson I learn everyday since I’ve been fully inducted into working life. Life as a student is filled with large, empty spaces of time. And so it should be. Working life is diametrically different, to the dismay of many students-turned-working folk. But what lessons and what dependence He teaches us in this phase of our lives!

I’m brought to my knees everyday, from the time I open my eyes till I close them. I’ve found that there is simply no better posture for my heart and many at time for my body to be in. I see so clearly the difference that I can make in the lives around me, whether through the lessons I teach or conversation I have, when it is my Father who works and not i. I snatch at every available moment either to slake my thirst and quell my hunger for His written word or to ease the groaning within my heart for the living Word. I appreciate the discipline He instills me though the process is mostly painful, learning to rest physically (goodbye hostel sleeping cycle!) and above all to rest in Him. I like being compelled to place my trust in Him alone, thanks to the tightness of time in the school and out of it.

There is still a long journey ahead yet but I thank You all the more because you teach me these foundational truths and inscribe them into my heart, my soul, my mind and my strength from the very beginning.