Prayer of an Unknown Confederate Soldier

I read this somewhere. Beautiful. It was titled 'Prayer of an Unknown Confederate Soldier'. It is also called the 'Creed of the Disabled'.

I asked for strength that I might achieve;
I was made weak that I might learn humbly to obey.

I asked for health that I might do greater things;
I was given infirmity that I might do better things.

I asked for riches that I might be happy;
I was given poverty that I might be wise.

I asked for power that I might have the praise of men;
I was given weakness that I might feel the need of God.

I asked for all things that I might enjoy life;
I was given life that I might enjoy all things.

I got nothing that I asked for
but everything that I had hoped for.
Almost despite myself my unspoken prayers were answered,
I am, among all men, most richly blessed.

A Song of Praise

Do we sing as much as the birds do?
Yet what have birds to sing about, compared with us?

Think you, do we sing as much as the angels do?
yet were they never redeemed by the blood of Christ.

Birds of the air, shall ye excel me?
Angels of heaven, shall ye exceed me?

Ye have done so, but I do intend to emulate you henceforth,
and day by day, and night by night, pour forth my soul in sacred song.

- Charles Spurgeon

How well do you know the Bible?

It is Sabbath and I abstain from doing anything non-Godly. Here are some purely theological stuff ( they are from the Bible, for Heaven's sake) that I stumbled upon and am totally convicted to share.

Shalom!

During what season did Eve eat the forbidden fruit?
Early in the Fall.

Who was the greatest financier in the Bible?
Noah. He was floating his stock while everyone else was in liquidation.

Who was the first canning factory run by?
Noah - he had a boatful of preserved pairs.

How do we know Abraham was smart?
He knew a Lot.

Where in the Bible is tennis mentioned?
In Genesis: Moses served in Pharaoh’s courts.

What was the first medical prescription described in the Bible?
When God told Moses to take two tablets and call him in the morning.

Who was the shortest man in the Bible?

Some folks think it was Knee-High Miah (Nehemiah), but actually, it was Bildad
the shoe-height (Shuhite).

Who was the first dog mentioned in the Bible?
Moreover: “Moreover, the Dog came and licked his sores.”

Love is...

Joy is love exulting, and peace is love at rest;
Patience, love enduring in every trial and test.


Gentleness, love yielding to all that is not sin,
Goodness, love in actions that flow from Christ within.


Faith is love's eyes opened the living Christ to see;
Meekness, love not fighting, but bowed at Calvary.


Temperance , love in harness and under Christ's control,
For Christ is Love in person,
and Love, Christ in the soul.

Dr. Kenneth Moynagh.

Valiant Spaceman Spiff

Oh Calvin, Oh Calvin! I really cannot decide who I love more. You or Hobbes... or Garfield.

Restless

Lately, I have been listening to 'Restless' by Jon Foreman. On repeat. For hours together. It is a lovely song and trust me, the song's really very deep. 


Confession : I don't know what it means when they say a song is deep. But they say it all the time when a song is very good and worth listening repeatedly for 3 continuous hours everyday. I am just recycling.

So, it is a very deep song that will come out in the album 'Vice verses' this September. Switchfoot is one of my most favortite bands and they've got that je nei sais quoi that makes them and their songs totally awesome. When we are all in heaven, I think God'll organize switchfoot concerts every full moon, no moon and fourth Sabbath. 

When foreman makes songs, it isn't just with words and music... He makes it with life and soul. It is such a beautiful union when the life and soul of the song meets the life and soul of the listener.
Aha! I have used 'life and soul' three times in 2 sentences. And I feel like a music critic there. Bravo!

So, This is Jon singing 'Restless' with his singer Sister-in-law, Sarah Masen. 
No doubt you'll play it on repeat too.

Saying “I’ll ask God that when I’m in heaven.” | Stuff Christians Like – Jon Acuff

You gotta check this out. SCL is my most fav blog, and this is one of my most fav topics.

Saying “I’ll ask God that when I’m in heaven.” | Stuff Christians Like – Jon Acuff

Btw, Guys, 'Pease pudding in the pot, nine days old...' (which was the title of this blog, if you hadn't noticed)  has been rechristened, for various reasons, as 'Shaken, Stirred and Spilled'.
One of those various reasons is that it is tediously long. Okay, I confess, that is the only reason. And I don't know why the new name is what it is now. It just occurred.
 I don't believe you always need to name someone / something to mean something. Like, for instance, I don't believe that Ryan Sidebottom's surname has anything to do with sided bottoms.

PS : No, no, no, I am not going to post martini making tips on this blog. I have never drunk a martini - stirred or shaken. I've just heard those words in Bond movies.  Rest assured, This blog will continue to host nonsense.

google+ and @doushichan

This post is dedicated to @doushichan

So, it's 3 days since I joined google+, which means this post is 3 days overdue. I was probably one of the reasons for the 'insane demand' that halted the google+ invitations... You know, butterfly effect and all that.
And maybe because i was seeing a handful of cats the last few days, (Remember those cat - curiosity adages?) I desperately wanted to see what was Googy's new surprise.

So I kept googling realtime results for the invites (at work, of course) and @doushichan tweeted he had invites to anyone who wanted. I promised him I'd write a post on him if he sent me one. He sent me one and here's me keeping my word.

Lo, and behold... the promised post.

Thanks mucho, @doushichan. You will forever be remembered.

Os kitties

My mom loves feeding stray cats and turning the house into a cat shelter. One kitty that she recently added to the fold has delivered babies. There's three of them and I think I'm gonna call them Heathcliff, Snowbell and Minerva in honour of the... namesakes. Ah, no, no Garfield coz I love him too much to name a white / grey cat after him.

So, Here.. If you care.

That'd be Snowbell

And, Minerva and Heathcliff huddled in the corner.

You name it.

South Indian last names suck. Firstly because there is no concept of last names. Secondly, well, I can't think of anything. So drop that. So what we (huh!) modern South Indians do is use the husband / dad's second given name as our surname (though it sounds like a perfect first name).

I have always been scared of marrying someone with a horrible second given name which would ruin it all for me. Imagine! Mrs. Sharon Selladurai... Mrs. Sharon Jeyasekaran... Ew!

Is there some way I can keep this nightmare from coming to pass? Absolutely! There's this guy at my workplace, karthikeyan. And guess how he tells people to call him? No, not Karthik. Not even Karthi. It is 'Ke-yaan'. Yeah, the same way you would say K'Naan's name. Well, if Karthikeyan could change his horrible name to something as cool as that, Bring it on, folks!!

So what if I marry Thomas Arockiaraj?
This could well be a sentence I would hear often :
                                       Oh Hello there,  Mrs. Ockiar.

Or if it is one Sanjeev Duraisingh?
My son's teacher might just call out 'Leo Ben-Aising'.

Whoa! With such swell last names, I could even tell people my husband's great grandfather was on Schindler's list!

Way to go, self.. Way to go!

P.S : Do you think I am shallow? Then, either you have a cool last name already or you have such bad taste.

Forgetting not all His benefits

I should have posted this three days back. But then, it is never too late to extend gratitude. So, here's a big THANK YOU, LORD... for being there.

Last sunday, the last sunday of last year (Wow! I could write poems!), dad preached on 'Things we need to forget and the things that we need to NOT forget'. It was one of those sermons that sent me thinking, and thinking deeply.

Last year was pretty eventful. Loaded, actually. And just as He had promised, His compassions never failed... Great was His faithfulness.

He was there, by my side, even as I fell off a buoy into the sea, almost drowning to death. He made one of my biggest dreams as a kid come to pass - I climbed the Corcovado to see 'Christ, the Redeemer'. If the statue of Christ could be so magnificent, How much more would He really be! It was humbling.

He brought me to a great church, and stood by my side when I made lots of new friends. He amazed me every day with incredible things! He filled my days with so much laughter and happiness.

 So much as He held my hands through fun and lighter moments, He held me in His heart through rough tides. I can never be thankful enough for His ever-loving arms that wrapped me in when I fell out of love. Through my incessant ramblings and questions and despair, He never once left my side. He showered forgiveness over me and healed all scars.

He gave beauty for ashes, gladness for mourning, joy, peace and a whole bunch of Other uber cool things. He gave me breath, and He gave me Himself.

So here I am at the start of another year, forgetting what I need to forget and for everything i need to remember, Bless the Lord O my soul and all that is within me, bless His holy name. Bless the Lord O my soul and forget not all His benefits.

Ohhh, He knew it!

It's been sometime since this happened. I was thinking about it today and just thought I'd write. One of my most favorite songs like 5-6 years back was 'Always' by Mia Fieldes, from More than Life. It was a Friday night in January. I was in Brazil and this song was playing incessantly inside my head. I just couldn't take it off of my mind. I knew it was not on my iPod, and scurried efforts to locate it on my computer failed. I didn't have it. Aargh! I will bang my neighbor's door early tomorrow and get the songs downloaded. I so badly had to listen to it. And now there was this song Consuming Fire by Tim Hughes from the same album that worked its way up there and started playing alongside Always. You know the kind of feeling when every cell in your body wants to do ( in my case - hear) something but you just can't - Ask me about it.

I couldn't access the internet at my neighbors. I woke up all this early for that! Mr. Pres had had forgotten to pay his telephone bill. Why now?? Sweet!! There was a cafe nearby and I wanted to check if it was open. I had to cross Ju's to get there... and she called me over. *Aw man, not now... I wanted to go check something! :( * I was talking to Ju, and her husband pulled over. He was just back from church and promptly stuffed a DVD into my hand. He said a friend from church had given it to him. And as it was English, he wanted me to check it out. I couldn't reply for speechlessness got the better of me - it was the bonus DVD that came with the More than Life Audio CD.

Hurried talks with Ju and Ad and I ran home to watch the DVD.  =/, Only parts of the first few songs played in the background, and all the intro's, skateboarding sequences, Behind the scenes were up. The songs' volume was kinda low coz there was narration, people being interviewed and all that. I was like "God, it was just this close!". Anyway, so I had to go somewhere and download it... I might as well finish watching this whole thing. It went on, and then Always started playing and they were showing the performance - That meant the full song played!! I felt like jumping with joy!
I skipped forward hoping Consuming fire also featured fully. Nope. The song wasn't even there. :( ... Anyway, I was happy (well, partly). Was sort of secretly disappointed the other song I had wanted to listen to wasn't there. I was going to close it and accidentally clicked on one of those 'chapters' listed. Guess what, It was a black-and-white video of Tim's song. Now, what does one have to say to that!

When I told BM about this, she said - Maybe God knew you would want to hear those someday and put them there even when they released it. I hadn't thought of it that way. Maybe God did know it already after all.                      
                      Ohhh, He knew it!!

It all mattered.

Hiya! It's been some real long. Hey, No.. Elections / IPL didn't send me into oblivion. Had some stuff happening in my own world - Vacating the hostel, last minute adieus, a hundred hugs (seriously), blah.blah.blah.

Bidding goodbye to the place that I was taught to call my "Second Home" for the last four years wasn't all that dramatic for me. I know I am going to miss some people who taught me so much in life. Some things that made life so exciting. Some incidents that shaped me into what I am now, for better or for worse. But there's really no drama in there.

Alright, I just wanted to thank God first of everything for making it all happen. And thanks to all you guys who really changed a lot about my ownself, my perspectives, my stupidity. I owe you all big time. The blogosphere would not contain if I start off with who's done what. So, Here goes just naming names and pouring out all my gratitude!!

The morning assemblies, The choir, The PC's, The uncensored Hostel fun, The beautiful mountains, weather and the rainbows - For making me rediscover myself.

Paapa, Devaraagam, Calligraphy, AppleRum, Paniyaaram, Bajji, Stepmom, Remix, TutiGirl, Jakkamma, Flowerbed, Avril Wannabe, BabuBoy, SolaiMalar, Mottai, Junior Operator, Carrot Blender, BusBaas, Bin*Bin - For making every bit of my college span total fun.

Mostafa, SRA, The Lamp, PuppyDog, Affleck, VeetuSoru, Gundu, Altitude, Sottai, RSR, No23, Quilon, Bigatha, Hope-Giver, Mani Enna?, Ms.Jackie Chan, Blouse-Stealer, Wings, Piglet, DaVinci, Post-Jan. - For all that you've done, been.


Pink Panther - For shoving some sense into my head everytime I become cranky. For all the fun. For all the secrets.

The Tribe - For the music. For the pranks. For being the sweetest and the stupidest brother ever. You sure can make make me laugh.

Mother Goose - For being the Father-Figure, the Mother-Figure, My Warden, My Boss. I would've lost myself somewhere if you hadn't been there. Honest.

Beyond Madness - For being my Jonathan. Or Perhaps, I am Jonathan, King David. Simply, For a million reasons.

What-Do-I-Name-You? - For the hours, the minutes, the seconds. For Everything. You chaged my life forever.