My Lifeline, God's Deadline!

As you read this, I am (or rather, we are, my husband and I) on our trip of hideaway, probably cruising like this, not along the magnificent Rejang River, but Mekong River. But believe me, I feel as old as this Iban woman in the picture!


It was a last minute plan for a short holiday. In real sense, hubby “demanded” a holiday and for that reason, I “asked” him to pay for all expenses, plus some more allowances! Well, it’s my birthday, a birthday bash, you may call it. And he gladly wrote a cheque and I went happily to the bank while planning for a budget travel and keep the balance!

Well, just a birthday, No big deal. It’s mute reminders that more sand has passed through the hour glass. But each birthday is a milestone … it has its significance. If you boil the years into minutes, I have experienced over millions of them!

Talk about feeling old!

On the first day of this year, when my evergreen journalist Raymond Tan celebrated his birthday, I mused that because his cake could not hold all the candles, so we saved the cake and gave him a wallet for him to keep his monies that he must have saved aplenty over the years. Secretly, I dreaded that eleven months later if my colleagues will to buy a cake for me, if they could put on all the candles, the frosting would melt before I’d be able to blow all of them out!

Having a birthday at the close of the year is always a timely reminder of the perfect prayers by the psalmist –

So teach us to number our days,
that we may present to Thee a heart of wisdom.
(Psalm 90:12)

It was in November that I usually start to plan for next year. I mark my calendars (or rather my Palm Treo) with events and deadlines. I make annual appraisal of what I have achieved over the years. And should I have things not done, I still have two months to get them organized.

I always muse myself of this “7Eleven” birthday. There is no 7Eleven store in Sibu, but I spent considerable time in Singapore where in every other street, there is such a convenient store. This 24-hour store is like lifelines to many people where you could find all that you need at wee hours.

Birthdays are also built into our calendar each year as lifelines by God. It enables us to make an annual appraisal of the depth of our life – not whether we have met the deadlines, but whether we have fulfilled His purpose in our life, whether we have been faithful to the small, obscure tasks that He entrusted on us.

As I cruise along Mekong River, as I walked through the Saigon streets which are intriguing mixes of past and present, Lord, help me to stop and reflect - Am I just growing old? Or am I also growing up? Are there marks of wisdom that were not there when I was much younger?

Teach me to number my lifeline as God’s deadline!

(This is a scheduled post. I do not have my laptop with me this time though there are so many deadlines to meet in work! But, but, I have my blackberry, probably my lifeline!)