I think looking back at the previous entry, for people other than myself, it would've brought a response "why so stupid, why this why that, you could've done this you could've done that" Theres no point pointing fingers, or telling me what to do, but its more of a personal lesson learnt. Thanks for those who are concerned and showed it in one way or another, but yeah I didnt need a solution, I just needed to get back on my feet and carry on. Just to make a final statement to mark the closure of the previous entry, it would be: "I've gotten over it already, and so should you."
To mark the beginning of this new entry, what the spirit impressed on my heart was: the next generation.
Our grandparents are fruit borne from our great-grandparents. Our parents, fruit from our grandparents, you and I from our parents, and in the next 10-20 years, we will be parents of our own kids. The strength of any organisation does not lie in the mainstayers or people in upper management. It lies in the future generation. You can build a multi-million dollar enterprise with years of hard work, and yet, crumble in the hands of future generations.
One of the world's greatest football managers, Arsene Wenger, manager of Arsenal Football Club in England, exhibits such foresighted-ness. His talent scouts search the world for young and promising teenagers to play at the club. The average age of his squad can be easily 23 or 24 years of age, the youngest 16 or 17. People have commented, including myself, that its a young team, how can they ever win the league? and they say "Arsenal's a team for the future, they'll never win it." They'll get whipped by the big guns likes Manchester United, Liverpool and Chelsea! But if you look at past season's statistics, Arsenal have proven themselves to be nowhere near the bottom, but a top 4 finish. This proves that Arsenal, although young, can prove consistency in their results and in fact spark off a closely-contested title race for the championship.
University students, we are about to embark into the marketplace as fresh grads, our time in campus ministry is almost up. When asking around "what are you gonna do when you graduate?" there is almost a unanimous response "I dont know", and I dont deny that I am one of those clueless students. Well, I wouldnt say I would be in this state permanently, just that "I dont know" is just a casual brush-off simply because my plans are subject to the Lord's intervention. But yeah, aside from our own pursuits, it is crucial to prepare the next generation to recieve the baton. Like the olympic torch being passed all over the world, whichever country drops the torch, "sure kenna malu left right centre(embarassed to the max)". And like how parents would scold another person's kid, surely you would have heard this phrase," Parents never teach you ah?" Immediatly, the previous generation gets the blame for not teaching their kids.
I think one of the things I would want to do is to prepare a new youth band when I'm periodically back. Was talking to Lengkian the other day about the current band, and I felt that we shouldnt be the ones playing forever. As much as we are the pioneer batch of band members, we need to dig into the potential of the youths of today. We started out when we were 16 or 17, and got our first ever praise and worship session the very year we started out. I wouldn't say we sounded particularly good (in fact, I thought we sounded quite horrible when I listened to our early recordings), but we were passionate and radical. Lk, Don and myself sowed our finances into this ground and I must say our plant has grown quite big and strong. I bought my first guitar (an electric one) even though I barely knew how to play even a normal guitar. Though members changed as the years went by, we went on from glory to glory.
Eden (which was what we were known as when we first started out) was not born out of professional musicians, but out of a group of passionate, radical youths who were readily willing to serve God with the little that they had. So if you are looking for a long-term commodity that will reap long term rewards, there you have it laid on the table. I've always felt that a "teacher"'s job is always undervalued, underpaid and under-rated. In fact they are doing so much more to mould the youths of tomorrow!
And in all that moulding and teaching, is the essence of being a worldshaker and historymaker. By shaping the worldshakers and historymakers of tomorrow, you are a worldshaker and historymaker of today.
No comments:
Post a Comment