Out of the Blue.... Yet?

I was in quite a deep depression the whole week. Every morning woke up by bad dreams. Even woke up by my own crying once.

Nothing/noone was able to cheer me. I was pulling some of my friends' legs by dragging them when they were caring about me. Adding onto me, I felt more guilty. Apologize to them.

It went on for the week, probably because of my work. Stacked up stresses plus my dean told me that although my teaching is excellent (he did use that word) but my research is not good enough. There IS some distance between my current research and their expectation. Unless I did some significant improvement, otherwise in two years time, I will lose my job. Yes, they don't care about teaching. This is the sad thing about universities, they are ranked highly ONLY because of research, nothing deal with teachings. Noone cares about teaching. So far if the teachers do not do crazy mistakes or do not strip in front of your own class, they can just stand there and read the books to students... to teach.

Deep deep blue is affecting me. Of course the same old questions are appearing again, "what am I doing here", "am I doing the right thing for God"...

Well, I am a sinner who needs help.

Stresses from ministries are also piling up. Fortunately BSF is ending. However, sunday school teachers have to go for a retreat this weekend. Bring my both emotionally and physically drained body, i didn't expect much in the retreat except please don't die here.

God is good. The retreat revived me, from death.

First, the speakers and games are really reviving me. My mood was uncontrollably returning to normal at the night when i was in the BSF DL fellowship.

The last day of the retreat, our pastor came with his weary body from Malaysia.

The sermon was good, it was about Abimelech in the book of Judges 9 in the Bible. How he decieve the people by imposing insecurity onto them. We are also affected by the world and told that we are finacially, emotionally, physically, whatever-ly insecure. So we need all those financial planning, slimming plan, etc to secure our positions. Pastor Chris helped me by pointing out a very important point: All these made us to forget God. This wicked Abimelech even killed his 70 brothers. However, one of them, Jotham, escaped (to Beer! what a nice place) and finally woke up the people about remembering God.

I do remember God, but didn't realize the world is telling me to forget Him, to forget that He can provide. It's a battle here.

I do forget partially in this modern days of Judges. Pray that God will remind and help me. Thank God for answering my prayer for encouragement through forcing me to go for the retreat.

Well, another week is coming, see if I will forget God again...

Abimelech means "my father is king" vs Jotham means "God is perfect". Isn't it asking about if your king is on earth or trust in God's perfect?