the gifts of life

Thursday, 5 May 2005 T: 20 11

Time is like that chain metal ball tied to my legs, restraining and constraining me. Having experience college life for 2 months, I must say that these days have been just a consistent race with time, and as I stare at the piling assignments, I wish for the hundredth time in my life that I would have a bit more time.

Sometimes, I wonder why I didn’t at all appreciate sleep in my younger days. Sleep is now to me a luxury. It is so fantastic having a 12-hour sleep, and now, every dawn seems just to be a violent struggle. I think sometimes I rather hug the bed and just lie there forever and ever…

Sometimes, I begin to realise that the pursuit for material is just an endless illusion that spare few. Wealth and world possessions are just earthly and temporal things. I have spend so much time and effort obtaining them, that perhaps I do not see that the things I enjoy most are not the ones that comes with a price tag. Rather, it’s the natural and God-created gifts that brings delight and wonder. If you ask me, I can name almost nothing besides my faith that are better than the gifts of sight, smell, hearing, touch and taste. I would not want to be living in complete darkness, neither in total silence, nor without the ability to smell. I do not want to be in a state when shark’s fin and cow dung are no difference in my mouth, neither do I want to lose the warmth and affection of touch.

In a class of kindergarten students, a bunch of children are asked to name the Seven Wonders of the World. The bright ones quickly jot down the Grand Canyon, etc. Yet a girl, perhaps still naïve and innocent and pure, wrote that answer that causes a reflective surprise of the teacher. In that neat and tidy handwriting, she wrote, “To see, smell, hear, taste, touch, laugh and love.”

Can the ‘wonders’ built by man ever be comparable to these gifts that are given to us right from day one, these gifts that many have taken for granted? Even with our astronomical buildings, lightning-speed cars, what is the point of life if there is an absence of love, if there is a lack of laughter, of elation and happiness? Would you rather lose your house or your eyes?

I can’t help but marvel at the powers of the Creator, who out of nothing created Man, created his eyes, nose, skin, ears, tongue, who out of nothing created minds capable of thinking, capable of loving. I am in awe, in amazement at the works of the Lord our God.

Yes, the ability to sleep is a gift!