For what am I thankful? Presently I am in Malaysia, the land of my birth, where my older brother and I will celebrate my mother’s 98th birthday this weekend! Thank God that her mind is still sharp and she is ambulatory. My homeland does not celebrate Thanksgiving Day. But here are a few random thanksgiving reflections:
- My three favorite words: grace, rest and freedom. With grace I have nothing to prove. With rest I am never tired. With freedom I can fly. It’s all possible for me only because of Jesus!
- My magical mystical marvelous mysterious conversion. It is nothing but the grace of God that God magically and mysteriously revealed himself to me in 1980. It might be akin to what Isaiah experienced when his own eyes saw the Lord (Isa 6:1, 5)!
- The happiest story of my life: getting married in 1981. Indeed, if not for UBF I would not be married! God led me half way around the world from Malaysia to Chicago to attend a church that took it upon herself to provide a wife for me. This was nothing but God’s marvelous providential grace because I could never have gotten married on my own, and I knew it. The last 34 years of our marriage have been the happiest years of my life. I’m thankful that our daughter appreciates that her parents are such an odd couple, and that’s probably putting it mildly.