Unveiled Faces

I read the other day that some computer scientists predict that by 2030, we will have developed what they call Singularity, a computer with artificial intelligence so that it can make improvements to itself, first slowly then exponentially. When that happens, one can upload his/her brain to the computer and live forever. Whether or not that is going to happen is a matter of speculation, but even if it becomes possible, if one merely lives them in folly, instead of wisdom (v. 13)? It is preciously because life is short and precious (v. 10), that Moses cries out to God, “So teach us to number our days.” What makes the short life span of men even sadder is the overwhelming majority spend their lives toiling for empty things instead of focusing on their relationship with the Creator of the universe. Living forever pursing dead ends seems more like hell than heaven. I agree with Moses, I rather live my life in wisdom and fear of God, for I will soon to be with Him.

I’ve been playing around with PHP frameworks, being so tired of coding everything from the ground up with PHP. I tried CodeIgniter and liked it but it felt almost bit too lightweight, i.e. I am not sure what it does for me besides organize things a bit. Having looked at Ruby on Rails, I wanted something that generated codes for me, this brought me to Symfony.

First of all, Symfony (http://www.symfony-project.org) probably have the best documentation of all the PHP frameworks out there (another minus against CodeIgniter). The website features not only a typical sample application that you can build but also a whole book you can view!

So I was excited to crack open the book and came across this on the first chapter

All the repeated data-access functions and the business logic of the data can be maintained within such objects. For instance, consider a class ShoppingCart in which you keep items (which are objects). To retrieve the full amount of the shopping cart for the checkout, you can add a getTotal() method, like this:

public function getTotal()
{
$total = 0;
foreach ($this->getItems() as $item)
{
$total += $item->getPrice() * $item->getQuantity();
}
return $total;
}

And that’s it. Imagine how long it would have required to write a SQL query doing the same thing!

Umm…I am going to go ahead and disagree with you there, because the SQL query would have been:

select sum (price * quantity) from ShoppingCart


7 words vs 21, not mentioning the time one would save by getting one result from the SQL query through the network, vs getting EVERY SINGLE price then EVERY SINGLE quantity, all through the network, then do a loop on the PHP end to calculate. This is kind of stuff that cause SQL developers to pull their hair out.

I know it is not fair to judge a whole framework by few lines of code so I am going to continue in my learning of Symfony, but I definitely got my flags up now, if one doesn’t understand the proper relationship between PHP and SQL, there is a strong possibility the Symfony is not all in tune.

When I was raising support to go to China four years ago, out of 40 supporters who have supported me financially before, only one couple responded. I have moved away from the area for awhile so maybe it was just out of sight, out of mind, but the whole experience was still hurtful. In the end, God raised some completely unexpected support and I was able to go to China, a pattern I began to notice. When I returned back from that trip, this same couple supported me for awhile then about 8 months ago they stopped. I assumed that there were financial difficulties so I didn’t follow up.

Just yesterday I received an email from their daughter. She told me that her mother has Alzheimer’s and because of that she has forgot to send in the support. Can they restart their support for me and would it be ok for them to make up the “back” money, she asked? When I read that, I felt both deeply saddened for my friend’s condition and overwhelmed with gratitude for God. I assured her in my reply that God has provided for us beyond our dreams this last year and even though at times we had some financial concerns, like Paul, we “learned to be content in whatever circumstances” (4:10). We’d be honored if they decide to restart their support but they don’t need to pay any kind of “back” money because obviously they were giving out of a cheerful heart and not obligation. How great is our God who watches over even our unspoken needs and allow us to have such faithful supporters! We can be content no matter the circumstances because God is always faithful.

Please keep Wanda and Gary in your prayers.

Praise is an act of obedience, regardless of our circumstances. David was in desperate need in this Psalm, having just fled from Saul’s pursuit. Despite the threat to his life, he was not anxious, his heart was steadfast. He disciplines his soul to praise God, to make enough noise to awake the dawn, and not worried whether this would draw the enemies onto himself! Because who God is (his truth) and what he does (his loving-kindness) he must be praised and made known among the nations!

When we fail to do that, it is either because we don’t know God well, i.e. we don’t know how incomparable he is to all the idols. So when confronted by the torrent of pluralistic ideas, we are left speechless. Or, we have grown complacent about how good he is to us. We have failed to reflect on his daily provision and protection. But let us not do that, let us remember who he is, what he does, and exalt his name above all Creation!

Having prayed for the Ephesians to grow in their love for God, Paul now turns toward exhorting them to love each other. I found 4:29 to be extremely challenging to me as my mind constantly lean toward evaluations and judgments of both things and people. This is both a product of my personality and my training as a consultant who was paid to find solutions to problems. When I am upset, it is difficult to hold my tongue. Paul is not only calling me to refrain from saying negative things at such moments, but that if I should say anything, it should be constructive.

This is not to say I am to ignore or give approval to sin but even when I think I am “right”, my aim should be to build up, and not tear down the other person. Such an attitude forces me to focus others, rather than my own interests. In addition, I need practice the kindness and forgiveness, because like the parable of the two debtors, I should forgive others because God has forgiven me much.

There is no better prayer I can pray for anyone than for him to know the love of God. How marvelous beyond words is the love of God! I, a sinner and a formal enemy of God, have been reconciled through Jesus so I can call him Father and bear his name as his representative on earth.

Having tasted Christ’s love for me, I should continue in that process so that I can grow unceasingly in this love. It is not an intellectual understanding only but an experiential truth. The goal is that I would become more like God in character.

How can a finite and flawed being like me to be “filled up to the fullness of God”? It is only possible through the indwelling Christ, by the power of the Spirit and with the “all of the saints”. In other words, I would never know the fullness of God on my own, but only as I remain in the Body, the church universal.

“Many are saying of me,
“God will not deliver him.” Selah

I lie down and sleep;
I wake again, because the LORD sustains me.

I had similar experiences to Psalm 3:2. Times when on top of my own doubts, people have discouraged me by denying God’s intention to deliver me, the very last thing that I was counting on in those times of distress. It feels like the rug has been pulled from under me and there is nothing to catch me when I land, on my face.

But Psalm 3:3 says that Lord, the master of my life, protects me from all around like a shield, from deadly, unseen arrows. It says that He is my self worth, my significance in life, and one who comforts me in times of sorrow. He is not an uncaring, absent God because He hears me when I cry to him and he responds.

He gives me rest from my distress so I can fall asleep at night. In the morning, he gives me another day of life, not to continue to wallow in my concerns, but so that I can praise Him before others, with the strength that He has given me.

You thought I had something important to say, didn’t you?

Did you really expect that? With these two phrases being milked practically dry these last few weeks, did you really expect to read anything meaningful with them?

Here is what you can do, write to your congressmen/women and mail them a thesaurus, for goodness sake! What is wrong with “Financial Market” to “Average Household”, or “Stock Market” to “The Public”?

Don’t get me started on that “Golden Parachute”, if someone is dumb enough to get a parachute made of gold, I say, let him!

No wonder we are in the mess we are in, with these uncreative people coping each others’ speeches.

I’m thrilled to announce that I am writing this article using my new Dragon Naturally Speaking software. It Is really cool! (ok, I am still typing some but with time the software would hopefully recognize my voice better…)

Today I would like to begin the first part of the miniseries titled Lessons Learned so Far in Life. Take time to think, sounds like such a simple thing, yet many of us go through the same cycles day after day, week after week never bothers to take the time to stop and asked ourselves questions like: why am I doing what I’m doing, am I doing it in the best way possible, etc? I have came full circle on this as the doer and a type A person. I thrive in action. I used to believe that doing anything is better than doing nothing, but I’m not so sure anymore. There many times in a hurry and eagerness is getting something done, had won down the wrong path and not tell much time and labor have been wasted.

Take for example last year when I was in China working on a dictionary that has three languages. Without thinking, I started entering the data myself. Now it has been years since I have seriously done anything in Chinese so my typing speed in Chinese is not the best and I just don’t recognize some characters anymore so I will have to look them up in another dictionary first. It was a time consuming and error-prone process. After about hundred pages of this, I was very frustrated. Then my more intelligent fiancée suggested, "don’t you know a Chinese typist, but it should let her do the Chinese part?" So I went to see the typist and she completed in two weeks what would have taken me at least two-month to do and many fistful of hair.

Nor are such examples limited to the personal realm. My current company, for example, uses an old database technology that came out in 1997. At the time it was probably cutting edge, and even today, you can see some of the reasons why they chose the product: it is very flexible and her little constraints on users. But the lack of constraints comes at a cost. Today, this small company of less than 100 people have 300 or more databases, that is more than 3 databases per person! (If you know about databases, you will instantly realize how insane this is. If you don’t care about technologies, substitute this with your favorite workplace example.) To make matters worse, most of these databases are interlinked to each other. So picture a gigantic bowl of spaghetti, and you get the picture. In hindsight, the day the programmers built the second database, pointing to the first one was a day that everything went downhill. Someone should have said: "STOP! Let’s THINK about this before we just do it."

In business and life, we are not called to be mindless drones performing routine tasks, rather because we were created in the image of God, we have intelligence and responsibility to use it. So take some time today to think through what you are doing, evaluate, and plan, you can’t afford not to.

All of the sudden, I don’t feel young quite anymore.

Maybe it is the fact that now I am married, now I belong to the elite cool group of married people and doing married things.

Maybe it is the fact that all of the sudden that I noticed that people are not too much older than me now. When I meet someone who is in their 40s and 50s, and that is old! :p If I really think about, that is only 10 to 20 years away!

So I am not calling this a MID-life crisis, that would somehow imply I am only going to live to be 60! But this is an Inter-life crisis of sorts.

I am not running out to buy that Aston Martin or anything but this hopefully will get me to think about THE big question:

We all want to please the ones that we love, so as I am turning 30 (next year!) it will be good to pick one afternoon, put my feet up, grab a cup a coffee and ask Jesus if I have been living according to his will, if I am being a "good and faithful servant"…