Pantry Magic and Hospitality

Chip Bee Gardens, Holland Village, for late night affrogatos and triple expressos and, maybe, a plate of profiteroles, we ambled round a corner and were promptly dazzled by that which replaced Sarah's Carpets, shining like a beacon of hope to the Singapore culinary scene (or at least the we-purchase-pretty-kitchen-stuff-and-use-them-only-once scene).

Some of us gasped and ran in.

Others of us said,"Meh" and resumed our quest.

Pantry Magic
43 Jalan Merah Saga
#01-80
Singapore 278115
Tel: 6471 0566

There is hardly a human being who doesn't take pleasure in the hospitality of others: a good home-cooked meal, a cushy sofa to crash on, cookies and milk for Santa and the reindeer... And God commands his people to be hospitable, but not because of some karmaic reflux or because do-gooders can somehow collect enough brownie points to enter heaven (for no one can ever be good enough for heaven, hence the need to Jesus to pay the price on our behalf).

Poor old Martha was hardly praised for pottering around her house, getting things ready for Jesus the VIP:

Now as they went on their way, Jesus entered a village. And a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to his teaching. But Martha was distracted with much serving. And she went up to him and said, "Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me." But the Lord answered her, "Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her." (Luke 10:38-42)

The way to be saved from God's judgement on our rebellion against him is not by sacrificial service of others but by listening and trusting the word of Jesus that his death will save us from the consequence of our sins.

God's command to his people to be hospitable is an after-event, a consequence of having already been saved as his people (Romans 12:13, 1 Timothy 3:1-3, 1 Timothy 5:3-10, 1 Peter 4:7-11).

Why show hospitality? And why receive hospitality? Jonathan Leeman sketches a biblical theology of hospitality in A Meal Says More Than You Think. Check out the articles at Monergism too.

(In view of the ongoing ASEAN Tourism Forum 2007, interesting secular views on hospitality from the Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management and Hospitality: A Social Lens.)

A Long Week, "Everything But The Brain" and Christian Friendship

This post makes sense to, maybe, 5 8 an unknown number of people? Thanks guys for your friendship in Christ. Am glad to have gotten by With A Little Help From My Friends (even though the assistance may well have been unintentional).

It was a long (time being relative, see) week at work, where dinner meant Superdog and early dinner that meant at 10pm we mosey-ed up to the nearest food-source, a gilded Chinese restaurant of the sort that only does good business at reunion dinners and business lo heis, and ordered takeaway in the kind of earnest Cantonese (despite not being Cantonese) that has never failed to so warm the cockles of the MSG-ladden heart of many a Chinese restaurant manager that he cannot help but put extra ("I give you extra. Enjoy, enjoy.") in the takeaway. Despite such generosity, was grateful for short timelets away from food in plastic boxes, tedious negotiations, flickering computer screens and dreary bits of paper.

(Must also add that thanks to sympathetic calls, sms-es and gchats, there was nadda a peep of Keane's "Somewhere Only We Know", misheard.
Props also to the I for furry comic relief contained in an Avenue Q CD:

*images from Avenue Q

Princeton - at a loss about what to do with a BA in English, Gary Coleman (yes, that Gary Coleman), an orientalAsian-American called Christmas Eve, Rod the self-denying closet homo-whatever, the B-side to mix-tape messages, Brian who made it known that he wasn't wearing underwear, Trekkie Monster the millionaire internet porn addict, and life outside one's apartment - a squished cat.)

At frisbee pick-up, there was a wide field of green grass under a wide sky and gusts of wind (surely, for the office dust), and laughing and shouting, and good sportsmanship, and lurking pools of mud to trap wayward soles. Time for new shoes, though not quite of the goody-two variety.

At Bible study on Luke 10:24-37, the Good Samaritan wasn't a goody-two-shoes to be emulated but a slap in the face for the expert-in-the-law who could not honestly hold to the conceit of having attained such perfection in loving God and neighbour.

At pool, amazing misses, brilliant longshots, accidental snooking and situational karaoke.

Macham "Community Spirit in Face of Terrorist Attack"

At Action Theatre and Jean Tay's "Everything But The Brain" where Gerald Chew was a young father with promise and a debilitated old man and swept the dust from our feet, and Pam Oei was a tantrum-throwing child and a menopausal princess and winked: Albert Einstein's theory of relativity, collapse-able/expand-able time explained by 3 bears with colourful pantaloons, travelling close to the speed of light to slow down time, a baby bear with slits for eyes at a grin and gravity-defying hair, a train to Malacca, an unmarried 36-year old physics teacher, a 66-year old scientist who suffered 2 strokes, Timothy Nga's unexpectedly young 27-year old doctor who doubled as an evil blood clot, a creaking swing, a ladder that was an upright hospital bed and also a ladder, a tupperware container fetish to contain leftovers and memories, a white sheet that could have been just a bedsheet, travelling the world with a brain in a tupperware, faint sounds of heart beats and tinkling and general ambient stuff (thanks Sonicbrat). There were absolutes around which all things relative fell into place. There was unconditional love pursued yet unpursued. There was conditional love that was a limp kiss and, as someone tried to explain, grotesque.

After: physicists trying to explain to lawyers and accountants how light is measured and relativity on quantum levels appearing as magnetism, black holes, dreaming of time travel and portals, a huge heap of hokkien noodles and oyster omelette and barbecued chicken wings at Glutton's Bay, a good recommendation of banana tempura (no mere goreng pisang, this) to be dipped in vanilla kaya, and laughing at Crazy Horse (Eng Wah promptly announced its closure that very night. But somehow, Channel Newsasia just isn't the sort of thing one admits to channelling).

And at no point did anyone hum Stephen Bishop's "All of My Life (It Might Be You)" from Tootsie.

(But speaking of lying on the sand watching seabirds fly...[cue: lengthy paranthesis]

One day, it was sunny!

Hearts fairly bursting with the freedom of dry ground and lack of precipitation, we grabbed swim stuff and towels and sunnies and hats and sunscreen and ran to the beach.

The joy of frisbees gloriously winging through the air, deliriously dizzy in bright blues and yellows. And in reds and whites, to lie on the soft sand when we were done, happy and hot, sun on faces, sun on necks, sun on limbs, raising heads now and then to drink from a pitcher of ice lemon tea. All around, the greenery imbibing their fill of the sunshine, chlorophyllicly ecstatically ecstatic.

It was a time for languid plans. Plans for a cupcakery in a bookshop. Plans for a cupcakery with white walls and a line of Kitchenaids of eggshell-blue and cotton-candy pink. Plans for a cupcakery with glass domes for a heap of thick dark chocolate buttercream ganache on dark chocolate cupcakes piled high, for a crowd of snickerdoodle ones rich with chunks of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and Mars bars and slathered with peanut butter cream, for a huddle of lemon meringue ones like little browned puffs of clouds on solid summer. No red velvet with rainbow sprinkles please. Plans also for a bookshop with deep-chestnut shelves and cosy enclaves for long browses and rooms for Bible studies and talks. We will have a music compile: "Music To Scarf Cupcakes And Browse Books By", frosted with Under Byen, Jane Herships and her song for Clementine, and Kelly de Martino and Bumblebees, all fresh minimalist delicateness and floatiness for the sunshine outside. Perhaps we will also sprinkle on Mathieu Boogaerts for poppish sweetness. And if Sam Beam of Iron & Wine wanted to play less breathy stuff on Friday nights, I suppose we wouldn't protest too stridently.)

Ah, but too many people, not enough meal-slots. Still, thankful for the fraction met before they sped through the clouds back to whence they'd come. At a meal with holidaying theology students, at first, it was all,"Woah, to spend all your days just reading the Scripture, talking about God's Word and listening to the Bible being taught! Always having someone at hand to discuss things with! To pray with! Studying the things of eternity! Without having to hide in your room or to exercise self-censorship! Shiok or what?!" And the reply was that sin is a real and stubborn thing and actually, actually, it required a great effort to get any Bible-reading done.

Late into the night, over bottles of China Apple (not a Mac) to maintain cheena-ness, looking into the eternity of forever, good heart-to-hearts, tearing over unsaved relatives and friends, the terrible offensiveness of the gospel to non-believers, the encouragement of God's lessons through different sorts of adversity, nonchalance over singleness, excitement over ministry plans and backup plans and backup backup plans and God's sovereignty, accountability partnerships, teasing out the hard work of friendship and loving one's brothers and sisters in face of universal sinfulness, fallen-ness and Babel-hood.

Thank God for the very good goodness of soul-mates: the friendship and mateship of fellow souls, with the same Father and same Lord, travelling the same road, towards the same goal.

Thank God for the very very good goodness of the one who is not a soul-mate, but better: for he has gone before us on the same road and so we follow in his footsteps. For when we walk in the shadow of the valley of death, when we join the black parade, where mates cannot accompany us, still we shall not fear, for there our Shepherd is beside us (Psalm 23).

Pan's Labyrinth (and Tom's Palette)

Don't say I ne'er try hor. But boring lei.
The week started with tickets in hand for Guillermo del Toro's El laberinto del fauno (Pan's Labyrinth. "Faun" = "Pan" 'cos it just sounds better.).

*Spoilers abound gloriously*

Pale men with eyes embedded their palms like stigmata (the horrific biological inefficiency of it all!) aren't quite our cup of tea. Narrative-flow sagging like folds of loose skin aren't quite our thing either.

But after Tom's Palette (thanks to Spots and ieat), and after the Baghdad Street sarabat hole-in-the-wall, 3 things still niggled:

1. the reality of the worlds;
   
2. the darkness of the fairy tale; and
3. the motif of obedience.
   

The Reality of the Worlds
El laberinto del fauno presents 2 worlds:

• the world of 1944 post-Civil War Spain where Ofelia's fascist stepfather, Captain Vidal, is bent on cleansing a small village of a motley crew of Republican militia; and
  
• the world of a faun, of fairies, of curious monsters, where Ofelia (tragic lass in Shakespeare's Hamlet?) is actually a princess, the long-lost daughter of the king of Hades, where she must perform 3 tasks before she will be able to return to her rightful home.

Like some fave writers, Jorges Luis Borges and Neil Gaiman, with their heady witches' brew of multi-ethnic mythology, international cultural references and gritty realism, El laberinto del fauno seemed a bit of (and nothing more than) a geekish treasure trove, eg:

• Captain's White-Rabbit (the OCD in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, not the local sweet) watch-checking fetish;
• Ofelia's Alice-in-Wonderland party dress (except that, down down down the tunnel, is a slimy giant frog);
  
• Ofelia's succumbing to the temptation of the food on the banquet table despite being rather well-fed, echoing the greed of Edmund for the Turkish Delight of the White Queen;
  
• the Pale Man tearing off the heads of the fairies in a delightful way reminiscent of Polyphemos and also Francisco de Goya's Saturn Devouring His Son (which hints that the fairies in question weren't really getting their heads bitten off. Sure enough, they appear again in the enthronement scene).

"You're too old to be filling your head with such nonsense," says Ofelia's mom to her fairy-tale-reading daughter in the opening scene. Is the whole princess-of-the-Underworld story merely a fantasy then, just Ofelia's way of coping with the gory brutality of 1944 - the horror of peasants having their face bashed in by their own bottles of wine, of living under the terror of authoritarian cold-hearted fascism, of stitching up Chelsea grins? After all, the Captain, walking in on Ofelia talking to the Faun in the penultimate scene, sees nothing.

Additionally, parallels abound between the 2 worlds, perhaps suggesting that Ofelia is merely incorporating her "real life" experiences in her "fantasy": the layout of the Captain's dining room seems to be the same as that of the Pale Man, there is the key to the storeroom and the golden key from the second task, and there is the knife Mercedes uses to cut vegetables and stab the Captain and the knife Ofelia gives to the Faun, with which the Faun threatens to shed the blood of Ofelia's baby halfbrother.

But yet there are hints that the Underworld is real after all: the chalk door actually gets Ofelia from her attic bedroom to the Captain's office and at a dead end, the labyrinth walls open for Ofelia but not for the Captain.

DarknessGreyness of the Fairy Tale
Happily, the labyrinth of the Faun is nothing like the all-singing all-dancing glam muppet Labyrinth of memory with David Bowie and Jim Henson's cuddly creatures. And thankfully, there was no sanitising Disneyfication either. Just (almost) the good old original grimness of the Brothers Grimm.
Loved the shadows, the palette (especially, the greybluegreen of the Underworld, all ancientness and organicness and ambiguity), the texture and the sound design (the creaking and wind-through-tree-branches of the Faun's limbs and the perfectionistic squeaking of the Captain's shiny black leather boots).

In their own fashion, fairy tales are not ways to escape reality but ways to articulate it. Fairy tales (unemasculated, unsweetened) help children learn not about the black and whites, but about the greyness of the world.
In the 1944 world as in the real world, people and the relationships between people are grey. Captain Vidal is smart in his uniform. He shaves carefully in the morning, his hair is black and shiny like his boots, he is well-groomed, well-spoken, and gentlemanly enough to get up from his chair when his wife enters and leaves the room. He is courageous in armed combat. He is a Mel-Gibson Die-Hard hero in a fascist uniform who fixes his own watch and sews up his own Chelsea grin. His men respect him. Yet he is no hero in the show: he tortures with pleasure and kills without good reason and without mercy.
The Faun too is an ambiguous creature. "My mother told me never to trust fauns," Mercedes advises Ofelia and we are unsure if the Faun can be trusted. At the second task, his fairies appear to give Ofelia the wrong instructions. And if the Faun was really one of Ofelia's subjects, he wasn't too keen on having her complete the last task after she'd got 2 of his fairies eaten.

Motif of Obedience
The Faun tells Ofelia that she will have to pass 3 tests before the full moon. The point is to ensure that her spirit is intact and that she hadn't become mortal.

What does it mean to be mortal? The film suggests that mortality is blind obedience. Presented with a choice, Mercedes and the doctor choose to disobey the Captain and help the rebels. Says the doctor to the Captain just before he is killed,"To obey without questions is something only people like you can do." Ofelia chooses to disobey the Faun (who'd earlier demanded strict unquestioning obedience after the fiasco with the Pale Man) and in so doing gains eternal life (at some point, the film conflates passing the tests and so returning to the Underworld as gaining eternal life. There are images of the Rose of Eternal Life, featured earlier in the film, on Ofelia's yellow enthronement dress).
A quick read up on Del Toro shows him reiterating on several occasions that he is proud to be a lapsed Catholic. But it is interesting that having rejected Catholicism (which he equates with Christianity), he offers a tale of redemption and a yearning for something more. If disobedience on a pedestal was his aim, why the gold on gold throne scene and reunion with family in the end?

Yet, understandably, this tale is not the same as the gospel, because while it reminds us of the need to be discerning, to tell between truth and untruth, it lacks one major ingredient of the gospel, the ingredient for which we give God glory and praise and the reason why the gospel is the "good news": it lacks grace - the admittance to The Better World of one not worthy of admission, the entry into heaven of one who does not deserve to enter.

Not so simple!

*all Pan's Labyrinth images from Dark Horizons

Dry Days, William Taylor on Matthew 8, Luke 10 and Some Talk on Christian Friendship

It was promising, after consistently going to bed at 3.30am, to find, a few hours later, once the weight of sleep had been fought off, a goodly clutch of smses gathered in the inbox - some dissecting this week's Bible study and several others touting all sorts of plans for the rest of the week.

The plans looked like they might actually come to fruition when finally, after the days of storms and showers, the rains stopped. In the damp morning, the cats took full advantage of the lack of precipitation:

El Fatso (who puffs into a giant furrball once he's dried out and has had a vigorous roll on the carpet) err...stared into a drain.

And Dirty Blackie, who (as Hoobastank said of Paris Hilton) has no class whatsover, took a dump, in unobstructed public view, by the aloe vera plant.

But, the next morning was truly madly deeply dry. Sunlight filling the bedroom! Vivid green of trees! Tanned orange roof tiles stark against the deep blue of a clear sky!

"This is a day for sand!" I said.
"Yes!"
"This is a day for sea!" I said.
"Yes, yes!"
"This is a day for Scissors Sisters!"
"No!!", and then there was a pause to consider if whatwastocome demonstrated far too much knowledge of the subject, and then, sniffily,"besides, if one didn't feel like dancin', one oughtn't get whiney to such a dancey tune."

The first dry night was for William Taylor (fresh from the Church Missionary Society Summer School in Sydney. See here, here, here and here for more on this year's CMS Summer School) to speak the gospel from Matthew 8:1-17, with encouraging succinctness, at an event organised by SMUCF: where do we think we'll be in 160, 320, 640 years' time? We all plan for the future. Loads of people urge us to invest in something for the future - in financial products, insurance, property, relationships, for our children's education, for health...But the most important thing that we can invest in is heaven.

Heaven is not a pie in the sky when we die. Jesus demonstrated the reality of heaven when he stilled a storm, when he healed the centurion's servant from a distance. There is clear historical evidence that Jesus will be the one to preside at the heavenly banquet. Consider, then, the investment decision of a lifetime. Where will we, our friends and our family be in 160, 320, 640 years' time? Only one thing will matter then: where we will be.

How will we get into heaven? Who gets tickets to the heavenly banquet? It is faith that brings inclusion (Matthew 8:10-13). What the centurion did, and was commended for, had nothing to do with how well he performed or his standard of religious morality. We know next to nothing about the centurion, but we do know this: that he didn't think himself worthy enough for Jesus to come under his roof. Now a centurion was a member of the Roman occupying power in those days. He was in the first battalion of the armed forces, a person of great authority. Conversely, Jesus was a Jew, a person whose land was being occupied by the Romans. And even then, only a carpenter's son. Yet, the centurion must have heard Jesus' teaching, seen his living and observed his demonstration of unworldly power. And the centurion, a rational thinking man as military men usually are, must have come to the conclusion that Jesus was really whom he said he was: the Messiah prophesied by Isaiah in the Old Testament (Matthew 8:17; Isaiah 35:6-8; Isaiah 53:5-6).

We have all lived lives that tell God to stay out. We have all done things that we are so ashamed of that we won't even tell those closest to us. So when we look at awesome divinity, we must say to God that we are not worthy to be in his presence.

But there is a way into the heavenly banquet. The first step is to come clean. What a relief it is not to have to pretend to God that we are worthy. If we acknowledge that we are not worthy, we find that he will be willing to welcome us in. If we think we can waltz into God's heaven, self-righteously, we are not sons of the kingdom. We will be excluded from the heavenly banquet and experience only eternal regret and pain.

The second dry night was for DG and Bible study on Luke 10:1-24 and then for a few people at supper to get increasingly agitated about Matthias Media's Pathway Bible Guide on Luke 9-12, thereby alarming two nearby suits who were in the process of being fleeced by Newton Circus touts. Everyone acknowledged and agreed, 各方兹承认并同意, (while I, a victim of full-day Mandarin negotiations, tried to wretch a babelfish out of my ear) that the Guide promulgated an atrocious reading of the passage, more terribly terrible when one of its stated aims was to "model good Bible-reading principles". The Guide claims that the main takeaway from the passage is some sort of interesting evangelism methodology. But surely the main point of the passage is really contained in Luke 10:20 ("do not rejoice [that you have power over the enemy], that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven"), because Jesus' words must necessarily guide the interpretation of the narrative. Angry mails (angry at this blatant disrespect of God's word) winged their way to Tony Payne.

On the third day, as we stood and watched in the afternoon, dark storm clouds swept in from the sea, obliterating all colour into washes of wet grey. The wet night was good for a meal inspired by a couple's recent trip to South Korea, a round of thanksgiving for the past year and listening to a talk on Christian love within friendships.

The next night, it was dry again. Good for the (Red) Ferrari-brigade not to impale themselves on Sentosa's killer humps, and for watching the Café Del Mar launch party overflow - boys in cowboy hats, singlets and Havianas; girls in retro dresses and kitten heels ("Ah doi," clucked someone emotionally,"1940s-inspired empire-waists coupled with 1970s Bohemian print? Vintage is just sooo old by the time it trickles to the masses."), wash up on the less harried shores of Coastes. CDM had white walls, little pools and jacuzzis for kitten heels to slip and fall into, beds on the sand with curtains flapping near garden torches and woohoo!, fire-dancers twirling pois.

But the music, unfortunately, was run-of-the-mill, between-sets, toilet-break filler (surely even house fiends would disclaim parentage of such bastardised sound). Oh, where were you, José Padilla?

Lying under palm trees and Orion, distracted from reading about the meddlingness of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10:25-37, the nattering turned to the previous night's talk on Christian friendship. Notes from the talk below (mayn't subscribe to everything but was good launchpad for further discussion):

Christian friendship is more than the mere enjoyment of each other's company. (But having said that, as the Christian subculture places more and more demands on our time, we find that we have no time for friends, much less time to enjoy their company.) Friendship, to take a leaf from Christopher Ash's book on marriage ("Marriage: Sex in the Service of God"), is really "friendship in the service of God".

All Christians have a sense of relationship with each other - we are all heading in the same direction. And it is in our relationship with each other that we work out our relationship with God. Christians, as followers of Jesus, follow his example, so our relationships are meant to be sacrificial - putting the interests of others before ourselves. But this doesn't come naturally, it is something that we strive towards and work for.

In Colossians 3:1-4, we are shown the important consequence of Jesus' resurrection in our lives: we have died with Christ and we have been raised with Christ - how amazing is that! So we must live according to our new status: we must now set our hearts and minds on things above; the whole of our being must be focused on the things of eternal value. Our new status motivates us to put to death our old self, all sin in our lives.

Colossians 3:5-14 tells us how we are to do this, specifically (some of which is relevant to living within the Christian community). Sin comes easily to us. We naturally indulge in sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness (Colossians 3:5). But it is on account of these that the wrath of God is coming (Colossians 3:6). When we come to Christ, when we have been given a new self that is saved from the wrath of God, when the blood of Jesus restores our broken relationship with God, we must put away all these things. The Spirit that God empowers us to change. It is only when we look to Christ that we are transformed.

What is our transformation like? The passage emphasizes the forgiveness of others as we have been forgiven (Colossians 3:13). And also the love that underpins everything else. It is only when we understand how God has loved us that we can understand love (Colossians 3:14).

Influence of Friends

Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise,
but the companion of fools will suffer harm. (Proverbs 13:20)

Time is a gift from God. We must spend it wisely. When we think back over the last week, whom did we spend time with? What did we do when we were together with friends?

What do we usually do when we are with friends? What do we talk about? When we look at children, we adults are quite aware of who their friends are and are always on the look-out for "bad company". But as adults, we are shut our eyes to considering whether we might be in "bad company". We must be aware of how our friends are influencing us. Christian friends should be helping each other grow in godly wisdom and we must be doing this at all cost. We must be assisting each other to grow in Christ.

Faithful are the wounds of a friend;
profuse are the kisses of an enemy. (Proverbs 27:6)

Christians are generally good at "encouraging" each other. We are generally more concerned about what our friends think about us than doing what is good for them. So we make excuses for each other when one of us confesses a sin. We say "oh, you were really tired then" or "you didn't really mean it" or even "well, he deserved it". But this is encouraging each other to sin and so mutually discouraging each other from growing in godliness.

God's purpose of friendship is to push each other to grow in Christ. God tells us we must be ruthless about sin because we are now a new creation. So we should be ruthless about sin in our lives and in the lives of our friends.

Perhaps we might feel like hypocrites, pointing out the splinter in our friend's eyes when, actually, we have a plank in ours. But it is about the motivation behind our rebuking and correcting a friend. Is it judgementalism or is it genuine concern? Only we know our own hearts. We ought to pray about a situation and ensure that our motivations are right, rather than storming in with a quick word when our emotions are running high.

And if friends rebuke and correct us, we must react with humility, not defensiveness. Remember that the wounds of a friend are faithful, but the kisses of an enemy are profuse.

Do not be the one to say, after a friend has fallen away, "Oh, it really wasn't my place to say anything" or "I was just waiting for the right time" or "Oh, I was just praying about it, and now it's too late to do anything"!

All-Weather Friendship

A friend loves at all times,
and a brother is born for adversity. (Proverbs 17:17)

Friends ought to support each other by taking time to listen to each other's struggles. We must keep praying for our friends and keep pointing them to what is true and what is eternal. When we are going through hard times, it is easy to focus on me and my suffering. But we must encourage each other to lift our eyes to heaven.

The challenge is that we must keep doing it and keep standing with our friend. Adversity doesn't disappear over night. Usually, it goes on for a long time. And we will have to listen to our friend go over and over and over the same thing many times, and it will be very boring. But do stay and listen and encourage.

A friend is for all times, even times when we have been wronged or betrayed by that friend. We may be hurt, we may be in pain, but we must forgive, for the wrong/hurt that we have to forgive cannot be more than what God had to forgive us. Remember the Lord's Prayer ("please forgive us as we forgive those who sin against us")? If we don't forgive our brother's sin towards us, we haven't really understood the cross. The cross motivates us to forgive.

And we don't just love someone when they are loveable or lovely but also when they are not loveable and not lovely. Friendship is a commitment. Love is a commitment. It is for better or worse.

Expectations of Friendship
We cannot hope to have a deep friendship with everyone. It sounds clinical, but we need to make decisions on whom to have a deeper friendship with. We are not responsible for meeting everybody's needs. Of course, this is to be driven by wanting to please God, not man (ourselves or others).

We must not have too high a view of friendship, expecting our friend to be to us what only Christ can be to us. We must not be overdependent on our friends. (The same holds true in a marriage.)

Conversely, we must not have too low a view of friendship. We must work at spurring each other on to grow in Christ, especially through adversity.

Friendships may change over time. If both parties are single and then one gets married, it is usually the marrieds that need the continued friendship of the singles more than the singles need the friendship of the marrieds. Friendship is a different relationship from marriage and there is no reason why friendships should cease with marriage.

Thank God that he has given us the blessings of friends who help us grow in godliness. And what how brilliant it is that God has given us this ministry in which to serve him in growing his people for him. It's a good thing to tell our friends how much they mean to us in Christ.

The Spontaneous Combustion Episode: wherein it was discovered that smokeapotamuses who'd binged on onions and baked beans were at risk of ceasing to exist quite unexpectedly.

Rainy Days, Luke 9, John Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress" and Christian Suffering

Besieged by trebuchets of unrelenting rain over the last two months, claustrophobically cooped up indoors, there being no serendipity whatsoever between those little windows of sunshine and my sporadic gaps of freetime, restless with unexpended adrenaline...

Restless in the restroom (with a Pilot V5 Black)

Bored in the boardroom (with Helvetica Black)

(We heart Helvetica Black. Especially how the lowercase A glyph gives that coy little kick to the right. Ok. Not really.)

...so distractingly fidgety and squirmy during Adult Meeting, CLOBS and Sunday service that someone threatened the immediate administration of Valium via a nice thick needle, enough was enough. And out we went.

One night, there was pizza waiting impatiently for us at Pizza Da Donato on Sixth Avenue. Late another night, there was sitting under that mishmash of leftover Christmas and early Chinese New Year decorations unique to a Singapore kopi tiam. We nattered about God in breakups and ex-es and running our own schools and backpacking the world. On yet another stormy night, there was rolling up of trouser legs and wading through riverlets of water for a special delivery, still dripping with rain, of hot seafood hor fun and steaming porridge from Crystal Jade for the Overnighters.

On the fourth night, there was nothing but slickness and blackness and wet cold that seeped into bones, so there was teriyaki and bento and sukiyaki at Akashi Restaurant with 9 people at a long wooden slab of table gesticulating and talking simultaneously about "The Peak" until someone exclaimed,"Aiyah. Got 3 guy leads and 1 girl lead. What do you think? Must be 3 guys chase 1 girl lah!", to which 6 people laughed at his outdated heterosexual naïveness and the other 2 ordered more sake, which led to talk about the new reality show "Gay, Straight or Taken?" in which there are 3 guy contestants ("sleek and gelled, strong of chin and hard of ab") and 1 girl contestant, and then the different permutations that can result, in this pansexual age, from putting them on a Survivor-style island together with 2 sheep and a male dog...[Q: But ought we laugh lightly at the latest trends in prurience?]

In the grey bleak morning, there was an sms:"Bakkutteh at Balestier? Although if it rains, it might be problematic..." and there were visions of floating a sampan past the flooded florists at Thomson with their buoys of potted plants and befuddled pythons, hanging a left down Balestier Road, then tying the raft to a stake outside Founder, gingerly lifting a steaming claypot of pork ribs soaked in peppery soup aboard, balancing bowls of you tiao and kiam chye and rice and chopsticks and little plates of red chilli sliced into thick black sauce, bobbing about and eating, and tossing the cleaned bones over, port-side, to stray dogs swimming past, doggie-style.

In the grey evening, the rain carried on in sheets, unremittingly and we ended up at Emmanuel Stroobant's new Brussel Sprouts. Not flooded enough for sampans (so without threat of an imbalance in anyone's inner ear), it was all ruddy-faced cheerfulness, hot tasty pots of mussels, foie gras pate, calling fowl for the one who wouldn't have dead cow, 70! types of hardy Belgian beer - beware evil Hep A viruses lurking in dark wet alleyways! (not), and, hanging off their stout manly arms, mounds of the frites in moules frites, snugly ensconced in virginal white bowls. (And yes, there was mention of Belgo, London and its £5 meals. But only one. A very brief one. And not soppy at all. Really.)

As the downpour started to peter out, and the black deepened in the sky, and the wind swept down the corridors in the chilly aftermath, there was time for drinks and questions so embarrassing they had to be typed out on a mobile, so of course the discussion reverberated through the quiet coffeeshop at the loudest possible volume. And there was an sms:"Wht u dg 4 din tom? Wan din?"

The task of tusk fish

So there was calamari and fish and prawns and scallops the next day at the Greenwood Fish Market & Bistro (where seafood is fresh and unbulky and good for antsy people who have been stuck indoors without sun or frisbee or tennis, and no, spanking the monkey wouldn't have helped any) and catching up and a nice drive-about after.

The next day, it was still drizzling when we got to Café Le Caire @ Al Majlis post-fidgetySundayservice (where in the midst of fidgeting, a certain metal part of a pen was accidentally propelled into the unsuspecting congregation) for babaganush, kebabs and mint tea and ribbing about skinny jeans.

Gratuitous photo of skinny jeans

And after, under brollies, we trundled along to Samar Café for more mint tea, laban lauzan and a spot of quiet reading. At Samar Café on a muted afternoon, with the patter of rain on the awning and on the pavement, the passage of time is marked by tall silent black-thobed waiters making their rounds in sandalled feet, bearing smoking bowls of incense.

Monsoon days are obviously the best days for seeing people. And t'was good to meet up and to talk about God and his work in our lives, but the adrenaline continued to rise to bursting point with no avenue for release...

...which turned out to be a good thing for Luke 9 and "Pilgrim's Progress": entering a bookshop for some Thomas Pynchon or failing which some T.S. Eliot, left instead with John Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress", which, if judged by its cover art (hello, Edward Burne-Jones and attendant silly dreamy pre-Raphaelite sentimentality) and font, is the sort of limp romantic novel read by girls with a fascination for charitable good works and knitting lacy tea-cosies. Disregarding its cheesy allegorical method, it was a good companion to Luke 9 which we started on at this week's ARPC DG Bible study.

In Luke 9, Jesus tells his disciples that he is going to Jerusalem where he will suffer and die (and thereafter, be resurrected) (Luke 9:22). He warns them to be faithful despite certain rejection by the world. Discipleship is not easy. This is the cost:

If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. (Luke 9:23)

It is dangerous to our salvation to lack a proper Biblical doctrine of suffering. If we know nothing about the certainty of suffering and adversity in the life of a Christian, then when we meet with them (as we surely will), we will be faint of heart, give up the faith and return to the road to Hades. But amongst the promises to God's children is this: that it is only through many tribulations that we enter the kingdom of God (Acts 14:22), and if we are to be glorified with Christ, we are also to suffer with him (Romans 8:17-30).

Denying Ourselves
Once in a while (usually during festive periods), the developed world enjoys a bit of self-flagellation, laying on the guilt trip by contrasting pictures of a pasty overweight person dripping in obiang jewellery and a little bony child with a dirty clothes hardly masking his protruding ribs. Consumerist societies are made to feel disgust (if even only for a pinprick-while) at their own over-eating, over-spending, blatant wastage and lack of self-control. Assuage your guilt, deny yourself, we are told, by skipping a meal, by taking public transport for one day and donating your savings to a charity or sponsoring a child.

But Luke 9:23 is saying more than this. Just as Christ always denied his own human will and desires, that is, his will and desires were always subordinate to the Father's, so we must deny our own will and desires and be subordinate to Christ's. This includes submitting to God's will in any given matter (for example, abstaining from fornication (1 Thessalonians 4:3)). But a life of self-denial is more than making donations to World Vision or possessing superb self-control that will allow us to follow the tenets of strict morality - it is completely denying that any aspect of our lives is ours: we would not exist if we were not created by the Creator God and our very existence would have ceased if not for the continued sustenance of that same God. Therefore nothing in our lives, not our bodies, possessions, thoughts, words, deeds, goals, value is ours. We deny that we have any rights over them. Everything is submitted to God because we and they are God's in the first place.

In denying ourselves, in turning from ourselves, what do we embrace and turn to?

Taking up our crosses daily and following Christ
Far too often perhaps, we Christians think of the cross as something to be preached to the lost, as a milestone that we have passed at some point in our lives and that we have moved on from. But if we are to deny ourselves and turn from our own will and desires, then what we are to embrace and turn to is the will and desire of God in the cross - in both its salvific form as well as its metaphoric form. Just as it was God's willed plan that Jesus' life was to be marked suffering, rejection, humiliation, death and resurrection, so it is also God's willed plan that suffering, rejection, humiliation, death and resurrection will mark the life of a Christian, for we were predestined to be conformed to Christ's image. This does not mean that we will necessarily be thrown into prison, scourged, made to wear a crown of pricklies and nailed to a cross on a rainy day, though there will be Christians who will lose their physical lives because of the gospel.

It is possible that Jesus' cross was not so much the physical one, though that was very real, as the metaphoric one - the great temptation to sin against God to avoid terrible physical suffering. And as an extension of the denial of self, the cross we bear daily are our sufferings and struggles not so much against earthly powers as against the more deadly enemy - sin, against retaining our false kingship in certain aspects in our lives, against preferring our own will and desires over that of God. Many parts of the Bible make this link, for example:

Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted. In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. (Hebrews 12:3-4)

(As with God, nothing is merely gratuitous. The acts of suffering/struggling against our sinful flesh daily produce hosts of benefits. See, for example, 2 Corinthians 4:11, 2 Corinthians 12:7, Romans 5:3-4, Hebrews 12:10, James 3:17-18, Psalm 119:67, 2 Timothy 3:17, 2 Corinthians 4:17-18, 2 Corinthians 1...)

And just as our suffering is not due exclusively to external forces but the sinfulness that is within us, so the suffering of a church body will not be due exclusively to external forces (eg. persecution, false teachers coming from the outside) but also to the continued sinfulness of members within that church body (eg. hypocrisy, pride, ambition, envy). When we encounter blatant temptation to rebel against God, for example, if someone demands at gunpoint that we deny Christ, obedience is clear, and in that sense, easy. But encountering the sinfulness of our brothers and sisters within the church which may hurt or discourage us, we face the more subtle temptation: to retaliate - a sin for a sin.

(At which point I said, despondently,"Well, the person who'll get the last laugh in all of this is the devil." But the SnifflyOne calmly replied,"No, God will get the last laugh because he will use all this, even the disobedience and sinfulness of humans, for his glory." And the OverworkedOne added later, stabbing a fry in the air to emphasize the point,"God wouldn't think it much of a laughing matter. He will judge us for our sin and rebellion. But yes, ultimately, in the end, he will definitely win.")

How nice it would be if all temptations were nicely and clearly labelled a la "Pilgrim's Progress". We'd all give Doubting Castle a wide berth, as we would Vanity Fair (where pilgrims are pressured into purchasing all sorts of vanities: houses, lands, trades, places, honors, preferments, titles, countries, kingdoms, lusts, pleasures, and delights of all sorts, as wives, husbands, children, masters, servants, lives, blood, bodies, souls, silver, gold, pearls, precious stones...). And how helpful it would be if all people were conveniently named so we'd know whom to walk alongside and whom to ignore: "Hullo, your name's Mr. Worldly Wise? Oh, right. Good day to you then."

But life is not a pantomime or a morality play where situations are clearcut and people are either wholly good or wholly bad.

Neither is life anything like Doom: there are no God-mode cheats or invincibility hacks available here.

But we do have better stuff: God's word - the lamp for our feet, Jesus - on whom we can fix our eyes (Hebrews 12:2), the Spirit who helps us in our denying of self and cross-carrying, and God's promise - for those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified (Romans 8:29-30).

I suppose for the rest of the days of our lives, the daily, even minute-by-minute, temptation will always be to embrace ourselves, to cast off the cross, to live comfy lives unharrassed by the (increasing) evidence of our own depravity and unhindered by the constant struggle to replace God as king in our lives. Yet, if we remember the faithful who have gone before us on this road, if we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and take up our cross, and run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart (Hebrews 12:1-3).

Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
(Philippians 2:5-11)

*************

Pizza Da Donato: Pizza Al Taglio
8 Sixth Avenue
Singapore 276473
(+65) 6219 7562

Brussel Sprouts
80 Mohamed Sultan Road
#01-12 The Pier at Robertson
Singapore 239013
(+65) 6887 4344

Greenwood Fish Market & Bistro
34 Greenwood Avenue
Singapore 289236
(+65) 6467 4950

Café Le Caire
39 Arab Street
Singapore 199738
(+65) 6292 0979

Samar Café
19 Baghdad Street
(+65) 6398 0530

Weddings, Steven Curtis Chapman's "I Will Be Here" and Michel Houellebecq

The background piano at a wedding this morning brought to mind the 32nd wedding of 2006, where I finally capitulated acknowledged that the melodic line to this ridiculously overplayed (a 99% chance at a Christian wedding in Singapore), illogically soppy Steven Curtis Chapman song wasn't too retch-inducing:

I Will Be Here
Tomorrow morning if you wake up
And the sun does not appear
I, I will be here

If in the dark we lose sight of love
Hold my hand and have no fear
Cause I, I will be here

I will be here
When you feel like being quiet
When you need to speak your mind
I will listen
And I will be here
When the laughter turns to crying
Through the winning, losing and trying
We'll be together
Cause I will be here

Tomorrow morning if you wake up
And the future is unclear
I, I will be here

As sure as seasons are made for change
Our lifetimes are made for years
So I, I will be here

I will be here
And you can cry on my shoulder
When the mirror tells us we're older
I will hold you
And I will be here
To watch you grow in beauty
And tell you all the things you are to me
I will be here

I will be true to the promise I have made
To you and to the One who gave you to me

I, I will be here

And just as sure as seasons are made for change
Our lifetimes are made for years
So I, I will be here
We'll be together
I will be here

(people with the good fortune of not having heard this song before can reverse their fortunes here)

We are informed that the story behind the song is this: Chapman found out his parents would be getting a divorce, and he wanted to assure his wife, Mary Beth, that he'd be there for her even through the most difficult fights and the times when she felt totally ugly; a vow of unconditional commitment.

My lawyers would have thrown a fit! What's this?!, they'd have screamed down the line. Promising something you're not sure you can deliver?! Promising you'll "always be there"?! Snot Wot! Insert carve-outs, please, for kicking the bucket, for incapacity, for (hurhur) being raptured (however biblically incorrect), for innate sinfulness that might lead to unfaithfulness and betrayal in the future!

Force Majeure
The covenanting party shall not be responsible for its failure in the performance of its obligations hereunder if such performance is prevented by an act of God, fire, explosion, war, civil commotion, strikes, riots, acts of terrorism or any cause which is beyond the control of the said covenanting party, or its innate sinfulness.

Protect yourselves! No blanket promises, please people!

Which in typical lawyerly fashion reduces Chapman's promises to a mere pretty tune and a bit of wishful romanticism.

However, discounting the lack of opportunity (due, eg., to the trifling reason of one's own death), a lifetime of faithfulness is possible. Because we have as our model, YHWH who has shown his faithfulness to his chosen people over thousands of years, and because we have the Spirit in us to help us.

(After running out of this morning's wedding to soak in the reappearance of the sun, we sat at Coastes on Sentosa and wrote lyrics that took less laughably superlative poetic licence:

Tomorrow morning if you wake up
And proclaim you are a queer
I, I will be here

If sometime later you're a right old bore
And every minute with you seems like a year
I, I will be here

I will be here
When you're wrinkled like an old prune
When you nag incessantly
I will listen
And I will be here
When the honeymoon turns to fighting
Though you're smelly, senile and dying
We'll be together
Cause I will be here)

Michel Houellebecq
Applauding and toasting the union of a couple after a night of reading Michel Houellebecq makes for stark contrasts.

In Houellebecq's world in "Atomised" ("Les Particules Elémentaires") and "Platform" (err..."Plateforme"), there are a few marriages (all of which fail because personal freedom is hampered) and a lot of sex (not the stuff of erotica but the utilitarian, functional, transactional exchange/emission of bodily fluids). Part confessional roman à clef, part disaffected reactionary undergraduate, part middle-aged poseurish succes de scandale, studded with interjections of scientific expositions (in "Atomised") or the dreary minutiae of tourism management (in "Platform"), Houellebecq exhibits all at once the incoherence, dullness and heightened lucidity (along the path to inebriation) of an alcoholic man of letters.

In "Whatever" ("Extension du domain de la lutte"), Houellebecq explains his worldview using as a metaphor, the language of Karl Marx's "Communist Manifesto":

...in societies like ours sex truly represents a second system of differentiation, completely independent of money; and as a system of differentiation it functions just as mercilessly. The effects of these two systems are, furthermore, strictly equivalent. Just like unrestrained economic liberalism, and for similar reasons, sexual liberalism produces phenomena of absolute pauperisation. Some men make love every day; others five or six times in their life, or never. Some make love with dozens of women; others with none. It's what’s known as "the law of the market". In an economic system where unfair dismissal is prohibited, every person more or less manages to find their place. In a sexual system where adultery is prohibited, every person more or less manages to find their bed mate. In a totally liberal economic system, certain people accumulate considerable fortunes; others stagnate in unemployment in misery. In a totally liberal sexual system, certain people have a varied and exciting erotic life; others are reduced to masturbation and solitude. Economic liberalism is an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society. Sexual liberalism is likewise an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society.

Inequality continues to be perpetuated in sexual liberation: some get a lot, some get none at all.

His frustrated protagonists also face the problem of social codes: they lack the requisite behavioural knowledge to achieve any sort of stable intimate relationship with another human being. And even when some semblence of this appears, one party is quickly (and comically) killed off, underlining the fragility and futility of such relationships in the first place.

Houellebecq half-heartedly flings about some hope of redemption in this post-existentialist postmodern depressionism: in "Atomised", he suggests cloning to create a post-human race that would have no need for sex, hence eliminating all sexual competition. In "Platform", the solution to sexual pauperisation and friendlessness is free-market globalisation, in the form of sex tourism, allowing the sexual have-nots to achieve the same consumer satisfaction as the sexual bourgeoisie of their home country.

Perhaps, he is joking. The thoughts of deliberately-provocative winos sometimes seem profound to the serious and sober. In the end, his protagonists find no panacea in any human contact, but in the relief death will bring, an end to their numb tedious meaninglessness.

Houellebecq's is a very nice blinkered-view foil to the big-picture ordered world of those who know God, whose life is immensely rich with meaning and to whom weddings and marriage and sex are beautiful (though still flawed) images of, failed dress rehearsals for, an unimaginably more wonderful reality to come: the wedding supper of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and us, his church.

"Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh." This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. (Ephesians 5:31-32)

Investing in Futures - Yours!

William Taylor, who's currently Rector of St. Helen's Bishopsgate, London (reputably an evangelical Bible-centred church noted for its expository teaching) will be in Singapore next week. He'll be doing an evangelical evangelistic dinner talk on 16 January 2007 and a 2-day evangelical preaching workshop on 2 Corinthians on 16 - 17 January 2007.

The flyer for the evangelistic dinner's below. More information on the evangelical preaching workshop at the Project Timothy website.

Start the Year with a Rainbow

On the first day of the new year, a pack of Asahi in one hand, a few more cans of Kirin in the other, rushing for a dinner, there was the setting sun and a short shower, and our hearts leapt when we beheld a rainbow in the sky; that sign of God's judgement and God's grace and faithfulness.

The rainbow story is this: some time after the Fall, the world grew incredibly wicked and every intention of the thoughts of the hearts of humans were evil all the time. God was grieved by this resolved to destroy his creation by flood: all land, man, animals, birds and sea creatures would be blotted out from existence. In his grace, however, he considered one man, Noah, as righteous and saved him (and his family and some representative creatures) through the judgement of the wicked by providing them a way out, the safety of an ark, when the flood came (Genesis 6-8).

When everything else had been destroyed, God caused the waters subside and allowed Noah and company to set foot on dry:

Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, "Behold, I establish my covenant with you and your offspring after you, and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the livestock, and every beast of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark; it is for every beast of the earth. I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth." And God said, "This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: I have set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh. And the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth." God said to Noah, "This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth." (Genesis 9:8-17)

So the rainbow was a reminder of the reality of punishment for sinful rebellion against God and also a sign of God's grace (that he will, in the future, withhold punishment (by drowning anyway) from the wicked that deserve such punishment) and God's faithfulness (that he will keep, and not deviate from, his promise).

Does this mean that God is no longer a God of judgement and wrath? Does this mean that we no longer need to worry about God's punishment?

God is perfect; he is a God of justice and holiness. He cannot ignore sin and in his righteousness, he must punish sin. So while the waters will never destroy the earth by flood, there will come a day when God will judge and punish the wicked by other means.

But God is also patient and kind, delaying his day of wrath. So for now, it doesn't seem as if God treats the saved and not-saved differently: God makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust (Matthew 5:45).

Yet, the day of judgement will come suddenly upon the world, like how, in the days of Noah, people were eating, drinking, marrying and being given in marriage up to the day Noah entered the ark. Then the flood came and destroyed them all. (Luke 17:27)

Our ark is the blood and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We too, like Noah, will be saved if, when warned by God about things not yet seen, we in holy fear trust in what he tells us will save us: the death of his Son for us on the cross (Hebrews 11:7; 1 Peter 3:20-22).

The rainbow, then, is not a symbol that God will turn a blind eye to everything that we do and how we thumb our noses at him and accept us without changing us. Rather, it is a symbol of his undeserved kindness, his forbearance and his patience. It is not a licence to continue to do as we please; it is an urgent reminder to turn from idols to serve the living God.

Do not presume on the riches of God's kindness and forbearance and patience. It is meant to lead you to repentance (Romans 2:4). Continue to ignore God, then because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God's righteous judgement will be revealed (Romans 2:5).