Rant of the Exiles

Time management help:  For as long as I can remember, I've struggled with procrastination, lack of focus, and the inability to complete tasks. As the latch-key kid of Chinese immigrant parents, I knew the drill - come home from school, have a snack, and then do homework and practice violin until dinner.  Yeah right. Instead I would lounge around, snacking and imitating the moves I saw on MTV (my generation learned dance from music videos not Youtube). I would try to start an assignment only to be distracted by something going on outside. My friends would come over. If we had social media, it would have been game over. I always believed my problem was time management. If I could only organize my time more efficiently, I would be far more productive. If I could only set up a plan where I  allocated a specified number of minutes to important tasks, I would be able to get things done.  It never worked.  No matter how well I planned, the boost...

I spoke about favoritism at UC Davis' Asian American Christian Fellowship a couple weeks ago. Campus Christian organizations tend to be quite insular and Asian groups are no exception as our need for belonging is great. Nevertheless, everyone wants to be around people of a similar life stage, background, ethnicity, educational level, etc. I spoke from James 2. The author exhorts believers not to show favoritism, particularly with regard to the rich. I encouraged students to take advantage of the summer and get to know people who are different from themselves. We all know favoritism is unhealthy. And my talk probably made a number of students feel guilty about the preferential treatment they exhibit in their relationships. I asked (but didn't answer) an important question that evening: If favoritism is wrong, didn't Jesus show favoritism when choosing his twelve disciples? 1) Favoritism is preferential treatment based on worldly values James 2:3-4  ...

I share the following in the aftermath of the Santa Barbara killings and the loss of George Chen, a former member of our church. Here are a couple misconceptions that the enemy uses to distance us from God, each other, and ourselves. Myth #1: Mourning is emotion-driven 2 Samuel 1:11-12   Then David and all the men with him took hold of their clothes and tore them.  They mourned and wept and fasted till evening for Saul and his son Jonathan, and for the army of the LORD and the house of Israel, because they had fallen by the sword. David should celebrate Saul's death but he weeps instead.  2 Samuel 1 depicts David's response to the deaths of both Saul, the king of Israel, and his son and David's best friend, Jonathan. Since Saul has attempted on various occasions to take David's life, including slaughtering an entire village, David has no reason to mourn and every reason to celebrate Saul's death. If you think about David’s predicament over the la...