Saturday Thoughts
October 25, 2008, 22:01
Went this afternoon to Kampong Kapor Methodist Church for an AIDS Conference where various speakers including our CARE Administrator spoke about the various aspects of HIV/AIDS. It was especially heartening to see so many Christians coming together to explore ways of combating the often heavy silence which churches in Singapore take in response to the stigma and discrimination faced by AIDS victims with the message of unconditional love. Was most moved by one speaker who shared that God answered her prayers by sending people to help her in the cause of advocating for more acceptance of AIDS victims.
If prayers are answered, then I pray that He will send someone suitable to take over my work at the AIDS shelter when I leave next year.
Was happy to note that people took so quickly to the design in our WAD publicity flyer. People also enquired about our work and bought our merchandise!
Sometimes we get so busy and self-absorbed with our own lives that we forget those who are nearest and dearest to us, taking them for granted. I succumb to that as well. I am glad that I spoke with P last night. It was nice to hear from her again. Glad that she has Thomas Merton's "No Man is an Island" to inspire her during her time overseas. Looking forward to seeing her in Jan.
"There are some men for whom a tree has no reality until they think of cutting it down . . . men who never look at anything until they decide to abuse it and who never even notice what they do not want to destroy. These men can hardly know the silence of love: for their love is the absorption of another person's silence into their own noise. And because they do not know the silence of love, they cannot know the silence of God . . . Who is bound, by His own law of Charity, to give life to all those whom He draws into His own silence."
“Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone – we find it with another. We do not discover the secret of our lives merely by study and calculation in our own isolated meditations. The meaning of our life is a secret that has to be revealed to us in love, by the one we love. And if this love is unreal, the secret will not be found, the meaning will never reveal itself, the message will never be decoded. At best, we will receive a scrambled and partial message, one that will deceive and confuse us. We will never be fully real until we let ourselves fall in love – either with another human person or with God."
I need to be more appreciative of others and to be more aware of their love for me rather than being so self-absorbed, to be able to love unconditionally.
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