My life, my dominion

What is your worth?
What is your value?
Of what purpose are you on this piece of terra we call earth?
Why were you conceived?
Why were you plopped down in thsi polluted, corrupted and hopeless world?
Where do you come in?

Where do i come in?
Why did i fight so hard?
What is the fruit of my labour?
Where is the light at the end of my tunnel?
What have i achieved and what have i attained?
I care not for the future but i the future is anything like what it is now i sure as hell hope the world ends soon.
What can i do?

I realise i am nothing but meaningless.

Let us look at Elijah in 1 Kings.

For those of you who do not know, Elijah was a prophet during a turbulent part of Israel's history.
He fought not only against the enemies of the Jews he also fought the Jews themselves as well.
In his time, the Jews had taken to worshipping the idol Baal, the god of Jezebel, the queen.

In a great display of faith and God's power, Elijah proved God's sovereignty to the Jews. He challenged 450 of Baal's priests in a show of strength. Where they failed, he managed to call on God to rain fire down from heaven and to incinerate an offering that had been soaked in water.

After such a grand demonstration, Elijah thought that he had finally turned the deviant hearts of the Jews back to God. But he was wrong, instead, Jezebel the queen managed to turn the hearts of the Jews back again and subsequently even put a contract out for Elijah's life.

Imagine the dissapointment that Elijah felt. From the great prophet he was, from the great acts that he performed in God's name, he was now a fugitive from both his people and his enemies.
He ran to somewhere called Mount Carmel, and what would ahve normally taken 4 days, Elijah wandered around for 40 days! perhaps, God wanted Elijah to sort out his thoughts. For when God first approached him, Elijahs first response was to ask God why God had not turned the hearts of the Jews. He complained of his pitifulness of being chased. And how did God respond?

God told Elijah to come out of a cave as He would be passing by the opening. Imagine, Elijah experienced, thundering winds, an earthquake, and a fire and he would have expected God to come in those but God did not. Instead, God came in a soft whisper. Perhaps God was telling Elijah, that God always has the best way of doing things, not all things had to be done in a grandiose way and that Man's idea of a good way for things to happen is not really the best.

Disappointment is borne out of expectation. Many a times we expect something to happen purely coz we have put in that effort. And when things do not turn out as we expect we become downcast. There is nothing wrong to have expectiations but when he start to expect life so much that is practically becomes a demand then wen the dissapointment comes we end up being so preoccupied with the dissapointment. The key is to not get stuck. Like the U2 song 'you got to get yourself together, you got yourself stuck in a moment, and you can't get out of it'.
We get os lost in that moment of dissapointment and self pity that when the answer and solution presents itself to us we usually miss it. Like Jesus's disciples on the road to Immaeus, they were so filled with dissapointment when they saw the empty tomb that they did not even recognise Jesus when he joined them, walked with them and taught them.

God has a better way, one more perfect than what we can think of, so pick yourself up and say a prayer and God will come to you, one way or another.

No i'm not talking about my job, i'm talking about Job, the guy who got tormented by Satan but withstood the urge to curse God

Many people think of Job as some kind of superman human who endured the worst of all hardships and eventually was rwarded by God for his faithfulness. That picture is half-right.
in fact, many people have the misconception that Job did not complain for 41 chapters. Wrong again.

The truth is that the final 4 chapters of the book, feature God rebuking Job for questioning God.
One would think that God would be happy enough that Job had not cursed his name, for that is what Satan had challenged Him. Yes God was happy that Job resisted cursing the name of the Lord and rightfully rewarded him in the end. However, God was not happy with Job's questioning which is what many of us tend to do. We may not outrightly comdemn the name of the Lord (it's something called blasphemy for which it would be unpardonable), but we indirectly challenge God's supremenous by questioning the reason why things happen.

Now as I have pointed out before in previous entries, we should cry out when we are in need or in pain, no sense it forcing ourselves to be content with the suffering and then think that we should carry on on our own strength. No we should cry out to the Lord for deliverance.

What Job did on the other hand was to lament as to why God did all the nasty things to him, like kill his livestock and his children. In reply to this God did not give Job a direct answer, in fact He answered in a way that many of us find irritating but it does indeed help us to answer our own ignorant question.

God put forth to Job questions with regards to who was the creator, who moved the sun and the stars, who held power over life and death. When Job answered this (straight forward answers) he realised the immensity and greatness that was God. God wasn't just someone pulling the strings of our life, he created and controlled all. He was the Almighty and His ways are really not for us to understand.

He will guide us and show us the way, and we can only lean our faith and his faithfulness to bring us through.
many a times, we fret over not having control in life. We envy others, and are frustrated as to why we cannot have the lifestyle of those we envy. Likewise, there are things which God has put in place that we 'disagree' with but ultimately it is for our own good.

We should cry out for help and not lament on our 'misfortunes', who are we to question the great plan? Have you ever thought back and realised that life has been good to you. Or that you cannot imagine how life would turn out if things had gone totally your way? Think about it and maybe you would be able to see the perfect plan of God unravel in front of you.

Okay so i'm stuck out in the Austrailian outback with nothing to do. So what happens i start thinking, really really thinking and then as usual, my idle mind just starts conjuring up absolutely irrelevant thoughts. To make things worst, they are really really far fetched to the point that i start wondering if i am sane.

I actually freak myself out!

GEE......

Anyhow yeah it was rather alarming.

Anyway more about my trip.

Well basically i shall bitch here coz i could tell you guys how my trip was (the nice bits) by word of mouth but it'd be very hard for me to not swear if i did bitch so here goes.

Basically i got treated like trash.

And i really mean like trash

I'm a 2LT, OFFICER, there are certain things that i slogged at for 9 months so that i wouldn't have to do them every again, but NO, just when i thought i was out of it, they DRAW me back in.

These are some of the things that i did,
1. clean tables
2. clear trash
3. pass messages
4. watch over vehicles
5. set up tentages
6. do water runs (i.e. get water)
7. run around looking for people who are of a lower rank than me (and much lower for that matter)
8. get totally forgotten but end up having to tidy up all the loose ends

SO essentially i was reduced to a highly trained MAN. Which i am NOT! I'm and OFFICER. I LEAD! Bad enough my stupid boss drags me 7000 miles to australia after having dragged me all the way to our unit to be and EXTRA officer. BLasted hell, and then i get nothing to do or even a post damn it!

Okay this may offend some of you but basically i'm the unit Project Officer (PO), i've now officially dubbed it the Prostituted Officer, where everyone just calls me to do their bidding. What;s worse i don't even get pain for it. I was essentially a slave.

To make matters worst, because of my lack of post, the other junior officers partricularly one b**tard who entered the unit later than me, thinks he can boss me around to do his job.

At this moment i pause to curse, swear, mutter and generally go wild.

Okay, now that i'm composed and calm i shall continue. So basically that's my main axe to grind. Dun care to elaborate. Yeah so basically my whle trip was one big sore bitching session. It really sucked if you look at it one way, coz things just didn't go well for ANYONE. Lots of incidents happend, it's a miracle that nothing major occured, even Doctor was surprised that no one like died or something.
imagine, some of the men didn't have warm clothing but they had no choice but to sleep in the freezing night out in the open because of somebody's cock up and then his in ability to see the folly of his ways. (The night temp that night was about 6 degrees and it was VERY WINDY)

Yah so yes it was rather crappy but the nice things made up for the lousy bits.

Oh yeah update on my shoulder, finally going to see an orthopaedic about it.

Yup that's aobut all.... i've got to start writing more concrete entrees

see you!

Totally bushwhacked (pun not intended for those who know where i just came back from)
Quick summary of some of the things i did/saw.

Saw my first shooting star, took a helicopter ride and took aerial shots of the horizon and stuff, went to the most magnificent beach ever, saw the sun rise (1 hour late but it was still gorgeous). Bought nuts, 2kg worth, gorged silly on chocolate, lost weight. Heh yeah will be sending you all photos soon.