Self Reflection

My church has recently started a thrust towards encouraging discipleship among its members. This vision has struck at answering chord within my heart as I have been longing for a discipling relationship with someone who could guide me spiritually.

From my pre-believing days right through the past 17 years it has been Wai Yin who has been my guide-post in all matters spiritual (and otherwise) but much as I would wish to, we have not been able to see each other on a regular basis. So it has been that we meet up when there is a crisis (always mine of course).

Since last month, I have been meeting one of my church elders, Laura, once a fortnight. This started as a follow up to the cell leaders training that I attended last year. I guess it is a way for the church to make sure they are not letting loose a wolf among the sheep :) Yeah so we have been meeting for a couple of hours on Sat afternoons and it has been quite cathartic for me :) I haven't been able to be as open as I am with Wai Yin but of course there is a lot of history there that I'm sure can't be repeated. Nevertheless, I have since realised how important it is to have a spiritual guide, someone who has walked the path ahead of you, who has been matured by her struggle and who can in turn help you cope with your own.

As part of this plan to get the congregation into discipling relationships, the leadership also distributed a table of sorts for us to gauge where the members of our cell were in their walk with God - new Christians, growing or mature. Looking at this table, it occurred to me that it really isn't easy to say. I suppose by the fact that I am training to be a Asst Cell Leader, one would say I have been classified as a 'mature' Christian - ready to help others walk with God. But in reality, I would say I was still 'growing'.

Just 1 incident this past week has made me very aware of how I fall short. Last week, the usual round of annual promotions came round and I subsequently sent an email message congratulating those on the list whom I usually talked to. But I omitted one name. Because I just could not bring myself to say to this person that I was happy for her promotion. So I thought I must be honest to myself, and not be a hypocrite, saying something that I did not mean.

But immediately after, 2 colleagues came up to me to say they had noticed that I had not included this person's name in the email. Al 3 of us had had bad times with this person and the 2 who came to speak to me were not condemning me but commiserating with me because they saw in my email, a reflection of their own feelings for her.

And in that moment, I stood condemned. I saw at once how I had failed God. I had in my human-ness, passed up a chance to forgive her, to see her through Christ's eyes, to treat her differently than as the world would have treated her. I had been petty and I had not had the grace to rejoice with her and God saw that. And in sending those 2 colleagues to me, He showed me where I had failed - because it was not a case of "being human" as one of my colleagues said. It was a case of passing up the chance to have made a better choice.