Run the Gamut.

One of the songs that I've constantly on repeat on Spotify - by Matt Papa.

A very good reminder that I am closer to God than ever. That my life arcs every 16 years.

And as I journey into the middle part of the 16 years.

I must thank God for bringing in my path angels along my journey. It is definitely not without coincidence.

I stepped into a choir hall again for the first time in a while.

Deja vu. To hear the songs, to see the people. To serve in the choir.

And I thank God each day as I draw closer to Him.

A heart for others. A heart broken and contrite.

Where others reach out and are so nice.

I miss the fellowship greatly. This is what heaven is like, just a glimpse of it, and I hope I can bring more of heaven to others around me.

I still recall spending most of the time at the piano after school. The tune I was playing - What a Friend We Have in Jesus.

Those were the days I was closest to God. Because I was despised and rejected by many.

And then I got attached the year after. My life took an upswing and got filled with many achievements that just seemed to patch onto the vulnerable unhealed self.

And now at 32 years old. 16 years after. The unhealed self emerged again because every single thing has been stripped away.

The shell is still there. Achievements. Goals. Objectives. But now you see the 16 year old me in a 32 year old body. Now playing a different tune - Almost Home.

The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak

But the progress is that the things that you’re incongruent about becomes smaller not through hiding or being a white washed sepulcher. But more through surrender of more things to God

When God asks something of me. It’s not to keep me in line but to draw me close.

An important question that I have to keep coming to. Because I oft stray away and find my identity not in the cross. To boast in other things instead of the cross. To not carry the cross that He has given to me and instead carry my own cross.

For John 8 reminds me that I’m no longer a slave to sin. I’m a child of God.

And if my identity is a child of God, what power, what attraction, what hold does sin continue to have.

Soup, soap and salvation.

Usually it’s a nightmare. But this was reality.

I dreamt that I was 17 and holding my ex’s hand and enjoying our time together.

And then I woke up and realised I am 32 and we have a daughter but we are not together.

Honestly the transition felt abit too great. I was unable to sleep after.

The irony of the Messiah complex is that the real Messiah didn't have this complex.

He was the exact opposite of that.

And he taught that to be more like HIm each day, is to do the exact opposite of what the world wants a Saviour to do.

In being the anti-Saviour, Jesus is the Saviour. Not the one who comes with a sword riding a mighty horse conquering lands. Not at his first coming.

"Behold how these Christians love one another"

This is the one you mentioned, and it has a layered history worth unpacking.

The original line comes from Tertullian, the 2nd-century North African theologian, writing in his Apologeticus around 197 AD. He records pagans observing the Christian community and saying something like — "see how they love one another." Tertullian quotes it as genuine pagan admiration for Christian mutual care and community solidarity.

Gibbon cites this tradition in Chapter 15 when discussing his fourth cause — the pure and austere morals of early Christians. He uses it as evidence that the Christian community's social cohesion and care for one another was genuinely visible and attractive to outsiders.

The irony is what happened to the quote over time. Gibbon himself, and later readers, began using it sarcastically — pointing at Christian sectarian violence, persecution of heretics, and theological warfare and saying "behold how these Christians love one another" as a cutting observation about the gap between the ideal and the reality. This is exactly the kind of move Gibbon makes in Chapter 16, where he notes more Christians were killed by other Christians in doctrinal disputes than by Roman persecutors.

When I was younger, I never understood why my dad would sleep on the floor in the house. Just lying there.

Granted. It was my mum's house and not my dad's house.

I'm doing the same today, and I laugh to myself at how silly I thought the notion was in the past, and how I do it now.

That it seems like it was destined and written in what's to come that this was going to be the case; something I couldn't escape from.

The idea of being in a house with your family, having predefined spaces where you can sit and be at, vs owning that and being in a place where you have the freedom and ownership of setting things for success.

One is where you inhabit and try not to take too much space, or let your presence be a hindrance. While the other is expansive, warm, and allows you to share your presence.

And as I lay there waiting for my daughter to sleep. Perhaps my daughter would think of the same thoughts I had. I was genuinely tired. And I think my father as well.

I've always thought that it was cruel that God asked Saul to wipe out all the Amalekites, including elderly, women and children.

Yet, these people were given 400 years to repent and change and not hold to the vestiges of the past. What their parents did they can choose not to continue.

It is also where Saul was commanded by God, and partial obedience led to preserving Agag's line towards Haman 500 years later, where almost the entire Jewish people were wiped out in Persia.

Salvation doesn’t cost us anything

But following Him will cost us everything

I have a feeling that most Christians never live the Bible because they tend to position themselves from a position of strength, similar to a Pharisee.

And you can see the difference in how Jesus reaches out to the sinner compared to many Christians today.

He doesn't reach out in anger. He doesn't quote scripture and declares dread. He reaches out mainly in tenderness.

For the Christian who has gone through trials and tribulations will read the Bible very differently.

In the past, you can recite it from memory and think that you are spiritually superior.

But when you go through the tough times in your life, you feel what the person who wrote that felt. The grief, the heaviness, the regret, the feeling of letting God down, and not being able to help yourself up, except through His strength.

And that is something that you cannot fully grasp in the verse until you have been put in the fire.

And usually in the fire, we fail the verse. That is where you build the humility to know that it is not you, and it is God.

For the Christian who has gone through the fire, has a heart that is tender towards others. This is where Psalm 51:17 comes true - "The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise."

When King David was writing verse 3 of Psalm 23.

This is something that comes to every person - young or old.

It doesn't only come when you are at death's door.

But if I were to put it - as someone who has suffered from what the world calls mental illness - from anxiety disorder and depression.

It is anxiety and depression. When you feel that there is no other way out.

That is the valley of the shadow of death.

And in that point, for David to write that he will fear no evil and know that God is with him, and God's rod and staff comfort him to know that He is directing the way.

After being in my own startup for a while, going through thick and thin, and pushing through survival, and now beyond survival and growth.

The tough part is to acknowledge God's hand in the process, when during the difficulties I felt like I was relying more on my own strength.

God, who has sent His son to save us and not condemn us, is on a quest to know us fully and love us fully.

For our secrets will not be cast aside in judgement but to be sanctified in love.