The gift of Unhappiness

The whole world was in shocked after receiving CNN, BBC or friend’s tweets at twitter.com about the Tsunami happened in Japan. The whole world starts to watch their news on TV for the latest video podcast on the disaster. The whole world starts to check their families and friends list in case anyone is in Japan for vacation or working with Japanese companies or studying at the Japanese institutions. The facebook’s shoutout post starts to flood the homepage walls tagging each other to check if anyone is doing fine.

At the meantime, at the small corner of a room located at the rugged street of Pujut 5, Miri (Malaysia) where a girl was facing the moment of silence. It was not a moment of silence of prayer for me. It was a moment of shocked as known as SPEECHLESS moment. I tried to watch the news via youtube.com but the coverage for the internet was down. In addition, most of the news was in Japanese language. I ended my curiosity with sighs, off my laptop and slept off the night, still, with SPEECHLESS thought.

After the Tsunami incident, my mom just lost her brother in law, he died without we knowing the sickness, he was just visiting my another uncles at my mom’s village, sitting down at the dinning table while talking with the rest then out of consciences, he fainted and died. Last weekend (a week after the tsunami), while we were having our youth camp, we received another news about death. The death of our previous church brigade’s captain, she is a wife to my family’s doctor and she is a friend to my parent. For the matter of privacy, I may not publish here about her death story. All I can say, it was mystery, shocking and ANOTHER speechless moment for me.

Deep down of my heart, I never questioned or blamed God about the incidents because in Matthew 4: 7 says ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test’. I am trying my best to be patience about the surprising news; on the other hand, I yearn for answers or understanding about it.

Out of this SPEECHLESS moment I am having, I learned about a bigger view about human’s life on earth. 

I called it ‘The Gift of Unhappiness’’

(Inspired by Max lucado’s book titled ‘when God whisper your name’’)

1.       Unhappiness because I am dissatisfied. Why do I dissatisfy?

I used to be very stressful about certain aspect in my life every time it is not happening to my plan. With the minor knowledge I have about God’s plan for me in this earth, I believes nothing in the restaurant or shopping mall could satisfy my stress. There must be something or somewhere my satisfaction would be clear. I worked, I read books and articles about it just to rebuild to do right things in the next hour and to ‘reap the bountiful harvest’ of my life in the future, until, I put aside the most important aspect which is ‘’this world and my life is not mine’’ because we are ‘’like a foreigner and strangers in this world’’ (1 peter 2:11).

2.       Unhappiness because I have not reach the destination. Where is the destination?

As I understand my dissatisfaction about life on earth, I still wonder the element which triggered my determination to move forward not to give-up. Long time ago when I first ‘received’ Jesus I asked God to send me His Holy Spirit to guide my wisdom and knowledge about life, so do ‘’God has planted ETERNITY in the hearts of men’’ (Ecclesiastes 3:10).  Though I did ignore Him, I can’t because as Max Lucado stated in his book, ‘’our heart song won’t be silenced until we see the dawn’’. There is a funny phrase I read (which I forget where): ‘Everybody wants to go Heaven but nobody wants to die’. 

3.       Unhappiness because I have not go beyond my bed. How should I start?

The continuous catastrophe events on the earth lead to the choice I am making, I may not be an expert in any skill to write or design new house for the tsunami victims but I choose to be EQUIPPING like Moses. He was prepared to climb on the Mount Sinai to meet and ASK God to lead the Israelites to the Promised Land (Exodus 33). I am asking God to mold my gifts to bring happiness.

Many stories and sermons preached and warned people to wake up and take action on their faith due on the disasters and deaths happened. Everybody is proclaiming the end of the world is near. 

Let us not be stingy and greedy with our faith. Do not just focus in building self life just to get a place in Heaven but let us rebuild other people’s life as well. Lets ‘’ live as God’s slaves’’ (1 Peter 2: 16). No matter how good is our knowledge in Bible, our house, new car or new career, it is just a ‘rented’ life. Let us ASK God to use us as his vessels to rebuild the tsunami victim’s life and to restore the grief of the widows and orphanages. 
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Priscilla Andrew is from Miri, Sarawak. She's a daddy girl, so we might assume that she's quite a tough young lady. She loves to quote, ''Look at the world with your heart not with your head'' Writing on Being a Woman doesn't mean she's there already, this is a long term process. But along the way; she's learning and that's when this note come into written words.