BY HOOK OR BY CROOK

Hope your week has been good thus far. You all know where I was doing my internship; no names mentioned. Wednesday morning, I was sitting at my cubicle when I heard an extremely loud noise. It sounded like a wall had just collapsed. Quite scary actually. Imagine a part of our building had just fallen away. Nothing seemed to be amiss until the receptionist opened the door to someone’s office. Lo and behold! A broken brick had fallen through the false ceiling (those with removable boards) onto the table, knocking out everything in its way. Now, this is scary because should the occupant of that office have been around at that time, her head would not be spared. Thank God this young lady is enjoying herself somewhere far far away and won’t be back for at least another week or two. The brick is believed to be some debris but since the ceiling is hollow, it is bizarre where the brick fell from. Elisabeth’s mentor, as hilarious as usual, was video-recording the ‘crime scene’, complete with self-invented commentaries.

I just happened to be thinking about all the interview places I went to in the last two years. Many times, the security and lift systems amongst many other things make me feel lost and embarrassed.

I was at this place and I thought for once I could bypass the security counter and just take the lift. I went in, the door closed but I couldn’t press number 18. Luckily I wasn’t trapped. It was later that I discover you need a security pass to flash at this something before you can press the button. So basically if every one in the lift is going to a different floor, everybody has to flash his or her card. Now, this is bothersome but yeah, it was a tastefully designed lift. After the interview, I was crossing a road which has been blocked out. Forgetting the traffic light wasn’t even working, I pressed it furiously out of habit. I always believe the more times you press, the system will be made to believe that there’s a lot of pedestrians waiting to cross, so it’ll change to green light faster. This lady who saw me doing this must have thought I was mad or something.

Usually when you wait for a lift, you just need to press either the up or down button. Whilst I was at this Ministry, in place of the up and down buttons was a gigantic number pad. I thought to myself surely I don’t need a password to take the lift. At least the security person didn’t tell me anything. It was not until someone came over that I realised you are supposed to press the number of the level you are going to. And boy, this is the most efficient lift I have ever seen.

There was this mini luggage-checking system at this other Ministry. For a moment, I felt like I was at Changi Airport. Kind of exaggerating, not as if there’s a lot of money upstairs. But I suppose terrorists just need to cripple a ministry to create fear and unrest in the entire country.

There’s this statutory board whereby you have to exchange your IC for a security pass. After which, there’s this MRT gantry thing which you need to pass through. Initially, I didn’t know where to tap my card because there’s no sign which says “Tap here”. Unlike the MRT one, there’s this small door bell-like thing in place to tap on. Weird. On Monday, I was pacing outside the interview room waiting for my turn. I was told the panel would sound the bell as a signal to go in. When I heard this faint ‘ding’ sound, I wasn’t sure where it came from and the HR person wasn’t within sight for me to check. I wasn’t expecting those loud canteen bells anyway, so I entered. I heard the panel talking about confidence so I kind of knew I entered at the wrong time. Luckily they weren’t too alarmed. I just told them I mistook the lift bell for their bell.

Now that one of my house lifts has been changed to the stop-at-every-level kind, I think some of the older residents think that when you want to go down, you press the up button to ask the lift to come up. Oh dear! Back to my headline: By hook or by crook. We’re all familiar with this phrase and might have even used it in our essays before. Did you ever ask yourself why is it by hook or by crook? What does it mean? Since crook refers to a thief, cheat or criminal of sorts, I always thought it means you can resort to bad and underhand methods if the proper ones don’t work as long as you achieve your aims. Anyway, it’s wrong and the origin of this phrase isn’t very interesting either.

What I want to talk about is how this phrase applies to God’s calling for us. This is something Pastor William showed me from a book. Hopefully I remembered correctly. We all know what a hook is. As for a crook, it is a staff used by the shepherd. It has a curved handle normally wide enough to fit around the neck of a sheep or goat, allowing a herder to catch an animal that is straying and reroute them to a different direction. Crook represents the shepherds who are really those in full time ministry because their role is to feed and look after the people. We are all called to be fishers of men. Therefore, hook represents us or even the lay people. We like to think that God’s calling is for the full-time ministry people but in actual fact, we all have a calling. A calling to bring the Good News to pre-believers. The difference lies only in whether we are doing it as a church staff or in our respective professions. What can we be sure of then? We will fish for men BY HOOK OR BY CROOK.

PRAYER FOR THE WEEK

Pray for forgiveness especially since we tend to ignore God when we are caught up with our work and give little regard to God agenda. If there is something in our life that is not right with God – prayer life, walk with God, service in ministries, habits, sins - and we have been wanting to do something about it for weeks, months or even years, let us procrastinate no more. Pray for God to grant us that willpower to change and not wait for another tomorrow. If we have made a commitment to God or God is calling us to do something, pray that we will cast it aside no longer and but seek to fulfil His will in our lives.

Please take a look at this Global Day of Prayer 2008: http://www.globaldayofprayer.com/10days.php

Lastly, just want to make a small plea. When smses are sent out, can we all try to reply as promptly as we can, even if it’s just a simple acknowledgement, so as to facilitate arrangements?

Thanks!!!

meapple