Happy Easter to all of you wonderful people!!!

YES! It's Easter Sunday finally. And I went for the vigil mass last night in IHM for the first time in my life and I tell you... It was really such a breathtaking, awe-inspiring experience. I was blown away by the grandeur and splendour of the entire mass, in the same church I've been attending mass every Sunday in. The choir was superb, the baptism of the RCIA people was WOW and it all left me feeling exhilerated and so happy. All of my senses were tingling in the electrifying atmosphere, there was just something different about mass last night but I can't quite place my finger on what it is. It wasn't just the soaring voices of the combined choir, nor was it just the golden vestments of the priests; it wasn't just the smoke spiralling up to the top of the church from everyone's candles, nor was it just the 5 readings and 4 psalms we were treated to. It was an extra special something for me, something I can't really define but something with a voice that spoke in my heart that convinced me that Jesus is truly alive in me today.

It has been a day-by-day uncovering of my eyes in my journey with the Lord. And when I say day-by-day, I truly mean it. Something happens to me everyday, and it isn't always some loud, spectacular happening. In fact, it more often than not is something small, some small happening that one could easily pass off as mere coincidence. Life in the Spirit is truly dynamic! There're a million and one things pushing and shoving at the top of my mind, just waiting for me to verbalise it all. Revelation after revelation has dawned onto me, but with every new realisation comes a dozen other questions! Yes, that's just me. My brain's eternally questioning and curious, even as I appear to do nothing with my life except sleep. But it's just a power-saving mode I adopt. Conserve energy and save it for what's truly important. Some of the questions I've found answers to by talking to some people like Daniel, Wilfred, Trina... Some of the questions found themselves answers through my own experiences. Some of the questions never found answers. And some of the questions which found answers bred even MORE questions!

But I believe God gave me such an impossibly insatiable mind for a good reason. I don't know what it is yet, but His ways are mysterious! That I do know for sure with a capital S. It's not easy for me to take my hurts, my sufferings, my crosses and bear them all with grace. It's so much easier for me to just whine to God about it all in my prayers, to ask Him to take all life's sorrows away from me. But although it's hard for me, for us to see how our trials are not for nothing, I'm constantly reminding myself that every single test I face must be part of His plan for me. To take me, this blackened, imperfect gold nugget from the river bed, and make me into the purest gold, by throwing me into the testing, trying fire.

Purify my heart
Let me be as gold and precious silver
Purify my heart
Let me be as gold, pure gold.
Refiner's fire
My heart's one desire
Is to be holy
Set apart for You Lord
I choose to be holy
Set apart for You my Master
Ready to do Your will

The strange thing is that though I cannot and will not try to fathom why God wants me to go through certain trials, I have the utmost belief that all will be well in the end. See each one of us as a diamond in the rough if you will. The sufferings we go through in life - whether it's as mundane as enduring the monotony of endless office work (I shudder to even think about the great pile of paper waiting for me to fax/file/fold tomorrow morning in the office) or learning one of life's hardest and toughest lessons: learning how to love again, anything - they all serve to act as the diamond cutter's sharp laser in his ardous task of shaping the multi-faceted gem. And hopefully when we close our eyes for the last time ever at the end of our lives, the diamond cutter's work will have been done and we'll be the most brilliantly cut and polished diamonds when we meet our Father. More perfect than the most carefully crafted Firerose or Flanders-cut diamonds.


*kel