A Blueprint for Easter

In God’s Kingdom, Good Friday is no chance encounter… It is a divine plan, a providential act, and an eternal design.

God created man in His image… And, what a glorious image! (“A little lower than the angels” Psalm 8:5)

So complete was man created to be like God, he was created with a God-breathed authority and free will.

From the start, God knew that man could not survive the acid test of free will. God had already planned for man’s failure with Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday in mind.

Adam failed the test of free will with the Tree of Knowledge. He threw away the God-given authority to the enemy. Also sadly enough, he passed on to all mankind the original sin, a separation from God, thus, a physical and spiritual death.

The Second Adam, Jesus, the Son of God, passed the test of free will (denying His own will and obeying His Father’s will) by dying on the tree (the cross) to reclaim for all mankind the original blessing, the lost authority, and a re-unification with God, thus, an eternal life with Him.

The cross is where justice and love meet.

The cross is where sin and mercy meet.

The cross is where poverty-stricken soul and grace meet.

The cross is where death and life meet.

The cross is where the seen and the unseen meet.

The cross is where the temporal and the eternal meet.

The cross is where evil and good meet.

Those are no chance-meetings and random encounters!

They are meetings designed in eternity.

At the cross, unequivocal and permanent victory was won and secured for all mankind for all eternity.

That’s why Good Friday (the cross) and Resurrection Sunday (the empty tomb) are “Hallelujah” occasions that resonate an eternal impact.

On Good Friday, God invites us to meet with Him at three places of the heart and spirit.

Firstly, we are invited to meet with Jesus at the table of the Last Supper, a symbol of His ultimate act of sacrifice for us.

Secondly, we are invited to meet with Jesus at the Garden of Gethsemane, a token of partnership with God in His redemptive plan for us.

Thirdly, we are invited to meet with Jesus at the cross, where the Good Guy won and where our spiritual death became revived life.

Finally, on Easter Sunday, we are invited to His table again (coming full circle) - only this time is the wedding banquet table where the Lamb of God is nuptially united with His bride, the Church. We are all invited to attend.

These are by no means chance meetings.

They are God’s heart beat and finger print of love for us.

For me? I can’t believe it!

Isn’t He so amazing?!

"Hallelujah" for the Cross!

But, more than anything, "Hallelujah" for the empty tomb!

The Eye of the Beholder

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” is meant to be a declaration that anything that is good is subjective and relative, as beheld only by the one who experiences it.

While the above adage is not above a healthy debate, it also raises a seldom considered notion: to behold something, the person’s cognitive, affective, and spiritual senses must be unobstructed, unveiled, wide-open, sensitive, and receptive to possibilities that are beyond the familiar, predictable, and mundane.

Yesterday, I was treated to three distinct expressions of beauty and God’s glory.

On his hospital bed yesterday, Bob told me a story of the inexplicable beauty of an indescribable frosty morning in Northern Manitoba when he was a copper miner.

Emerging from the bowel of the earth after a graveyard shift of mining copper, Bob and his fellow miners walked down a long, windy, and sloppy gravel road from the icy peak to the valley below where the bunkhouse lay. They could see the coy curl of smoke rising from the promise of where warm shelter would be, but hidden in the valley below.

The sun’s ray just pierced through the cracks of the mountains and shone on a thick shroud of frost hanging heavily in the morning air. The air was heavily laden with sparkling frost crystals. The morning light was so regally glorious as if it were the face of the Almighty.

“That was beauty! That was God Himself!” Bob gasped his exclamation to me.

“It was so cold that I could see in my mind’s eye wolves raising up their frozen paws in discomfort” Bob continued.

Bob’s total being was wide awake to behold the physical vision and to transform it into a spiritual experience.

Yes. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder indeed.

Last evening, our oldest son, Mons, had the rare of opportunity to play the piano at an art exhibit at the Piano Nobile Gallery of the Centennial Concert Hall.

Mons is a very talented musician. His music is soothingly enchanting. What’s exceptional about Mons’ musical talent is his ability and preference to compose as he plays, never missing a beat.

The art exhibit showcased Neil Kolton’s creative acrylic works, a unique technical and artistic style to which I was not exposed until last evening.

Somehow, the music of the sphere and the shapes, hues, and shadows on the canvas blended together in a complementary and beautifully sensual experience for all.

Once again, beauty was in the eye of the beholder, and the glory of God was in the hearts of those who graciously appreciate that all good things come from above.

Letting Go

My entire life is one of hanging tightly onto things, as if I may be able to control the variables which shape my destiny. I would not dare to let go, lest I plunge my life into an uncontrollable abyss.

I have a big problem! I have a control issue, as psychology diagnoses.

To be honest, there is very little I can do to control the uncontrollable in life.

Besides, control is illusionary. Only the Maker of heaven and earth has absolute and sovereign control of things and events on earth.

Life is not an exact science that one may manipulate the variables to bring about a formulaic desired outcome.

Though largely predicated on principles of cause-and-effect, sowing-and-reaping, “the Law of the Farm”, and natural laws of physics, life is a giant human billiards games where one life interacts with another in shaping the course of one’s life, a day at a time.

In other words, life is excitingly unpredictable and hopelessly uncontrollable.

When I hang on tightly to things and become entrenched in stagnant positions of thinking, feeling and living in a vain attempt to exercise control, I am basically a stick in the mud, too afraid to live life as one big adventure, with both pleasant and jolting surprises.

The ultimate irony is: my failure to let go would result in being held captive by self-induced anxiety.

The more I am anxious about controlling my destiny, the more out of control I feel. I live under the weight of not having (an illusionary) control that never existed anyway.

This is where faith in a sovereign and loving God comes into my billiards game of life: “Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you.” (1 Peter 5:7)

King David’s advice resonates with my heart: “When anxiety was great within me, Your consolation brought joy to my soul.” (Psalm 94:19)

I shall resolve, from this moment forward, to “be still and know” that He is God (Psalm 46:10), and He is in total control of my life.

I must invite Him, the Author of Life, to co-write the remaining chapters of my life story so that it may be His story.

Homeward Bound

I just came back from visiting Bob… at Health Sciences Centre.

I walked into his room and saw a mop of white hair, bending over and throwing up in a green plastic basin. He spilled most of the contents onto himself. He was too tired and weary to care much.

I said, “Hi, Bob.” His hollow eyes looked up.

I continued, “This is Tom… Tom Chan.” He smiled, “Hi, Tom”, though his vomit dripped from the unshaven white chin.

“Bob, I am here to encourage you and to pray for you.”

“You are beautiful,” he responded.

I left the room briefly to fetch a nurse’s aide. One came by as I was reading Psalm 139 to Bob. She said, “Go ahead. I’ll come back.”

Bob was moved with the soothing truth of God’s word through the mouth of King David in Psalm 139. As I read, he intoned with his echoing prayers.

I anointed Bob with oil and prayed for him, invoking the mighty name of our Saviour, enforcing His victory, claiming His authority, and leaning heavily on His promises.

Bob was at peace. He was in tune with His peace which surpasses all human understanding.

I read him Isaiah 44:2 and Isaiah 46: 3-4.

I believe God has a plan for Bob, whether on this side of eternity or the next.

I thanked Bob for his servant heart in bringing those school children to church Sunday after Sunday and acted as their surrogate parent.

He thanked me. I felt so humbled that he thanked me.

I gave Bob a crude home-made, hand-hewn cross, “This is your life insurance plan, Bob.”

He was moved.

I was moved.

I said good-bye to Bob, and promised that I would return the day after.

“See you on Wednesday, Tom.”

“See you, Bob, and God bless you.”

As my CD player blared: “You are the Everlasting God. You do not faint. You do not grow weary. You are the defender of the weak. You comfort those in need. You lift us up on wings like eagles,” I sobbed uncontrollably driving all the way home.

Have mercy on us all, Lord!

At the end of the day, Your grace is sufficient for us.

Bless you, Bob!

May He be very close to you!

Eternal Impact

Two years ago, I heard a sermon about the grace of showing gratitude to those who have made positive impacts in one’s life. (By the way, “grace” and “gratitude” comes from the same root word.)

I was touched by that message. I went home and made a list of all the dear folks who had left their imprints in my life and helped sculpture me the way I am.

Unfortunately, there were those, like my parents and an awesome high school teacher, who had passed on, and to whom I was way too late to express my gratitude. This, in itself, is a lesson: show gratitude and love, and say sorry if that's necessary, while we still can.

For each of those whom I wanted to thank and who were still around, I painted a watercolour card and wrote my heartfelt sentiments. I mailed them my expressions of gratitude.

I never anticipated the kind of responses I received.

People wrote me back to thank me for my thoughtfulness. Some expressed their near-shock and oblivion that they had, in any way, made a difference in my life.

The second kind of response certainly highlights for me that, in living out my life, I may never know where my influence, positive or negative, begins and where it ends.

That’s an awesome thought! That’s a frightful notion!

As if how I conduct my life is likened to the “butterfly effect” which impacts lives and shapes courses of events here and now, in the future and far, far away.

Well, that’s exactly how my parents taught me to live. And, that’s exactly how Jesus taught us to live.

Howsoever we live our lives in the here and now inevitably ripples eternal impacts on others, those who are close to us, those whom we barely know, and those whom we do not know. And, most frightening of all, for the most part, we do not and will never know whom will be affected and the nature of those impacts.

Am I a history-maker?

Yes and no.

“No man is an island,” John Donne was right in saying that. We all live in a community where one life is daily shaped by other lives, as the balls on a billiards table. In that sense, we are able to exert, intentionally, unintentionally, or subconsciously, both positive and negative influences on one another. Likewise, I am daily shaped by those with whom I do life together.

Viewed this way, we write the next chapter of our collective memoir together.

So, am I a history-maker? Or, are we making history together?

Or, would we want to invite the Author of Life to co-write our story.

What kind of story would we like to write? What kind of history would we like to make?

That’s the bigger question, a rhetorical one, that begs an answer which helps make this life and the next heaven or hell.

Yes. Who I am and how I live may impact others is an awesome thought and a frightful notion, and it deserves my daily reflective and honest attention.

Wild at Heart

I am untamed and wild at heart!

I have an untamed and untamable spirit. I do not fit into any mold because either I am wired differently or I freely elect not to conform.

I am untamed and undomesticated in how I morally react to daily situations that come my way.

When I sense that a seemingly impassioned yet misguided appeal, an authoritative command, a bureaucratic order, a “do-as-I-say” edict, or a forceful presentation of a point-of-view is false, faked, insincere, hypocritical, or lop-sided, I rebel. I defy. I challenge.

In that sense, I am dangerous. Yes. Foolishly head-strong as well.

I have an unbridled and unbridle-able will. I have a propensity to defy and challenge any threat and/or use of force, be they physical, emotional, spiritual, moral, legal, or authoritative.

When any organization/collective, be it private, public, or governmental, that purports to watch out for the welfare of its members but, when in effect, is self-serving in protecting incompetence, dishonesty, and corruption, I would be driven wild.

I have a sensitive and uncontrollable heart. I am trigger-happy when it comes to responding to any external and internal stimuli that vibrate along my heart-string, be they situational, personal, or mystical.

Though I am sensitive to matters of the heart, I, unfortunately, have been culturally schooled to cocoon the natural expressions of my heart for the most part. It’s only in the past seven years or so when the Spirit began to marinate and tenderize the hardness of my core.

When I rented the video, “Tuesdays with Morey”, and engineered, after several failed attempts, to gather my family together to view it while I sobbed uncontrollably to the horror of my boys, I knew I was in “deep trouble”. My heart expressions are no longer uncontrollable. A revelatory metamorphosis has taken place in me.

When it comes to living in my spirit realm, I am untamed and untamable as well.

One would see me worship in wild abandon, totally ignoring and oblivious to the possibility of curious on-lookers.

My stomach turns at the word "religion"or being described as “religious”. I am not at all more spiritual than anyone else. I just let my passion loose.

I am not a Mennonite, a Baptist, an Ana-Baptist, an evangelical, a Presbyterian, a Roman Catholic, an Orthodox Catholic, A Pentecostal, a charismatic, an Anglican, A United, a Lutheran, a fundamentalist Protestant, a Seventh-Day Adventist, a Latter-day Saint, a Jehovah Witness, a Unitarian, a Christian Scientist, a Double-0 Seven, a C.S.I., an alley cat, or even a mouse.

I defy any label.

I am simply a follower of Jesus Christ, and I hope, along the pathway for the remainder of my life, I may gather some dust thrown off from His sandals by following Him.

I do not belong to any church, any congregation, or any community of believers. I hold no covenant membership card to any faith institution/organization. I belong to God alone.

I am God's beloved child whose life eternal resides solely in His love and grace... a redeemed citizen of God’s Kingdom, His ambassador while I live, and a humble follower of His Truth. No more. No less.

I hold His Kingdom passport with His imprimatur on it, and that's sufficient for me.

Because I am God’s own, and only to Him do I owe my love and allegiance, I am not fearful of anyone or anything that impacts this earthly vessel.

First Century giants of faith were thrown to the lions, boiled in oil, sawn asunder, quartered, dismembered, decapitated, crucified, and tortured to death because they were untamed and dangerous.

Guess what? They maintained their course and ran their race.

I pray that like them, when the time comes when my faith is put to the test, I will be emboldened to stand firm and be very dangerous.


“You come against me with swords and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the Lord Almighty…” 1 Samuel 17: 45

“If God is for us, who can be against us?... In all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loves us.” Romans 8: 31.


In God's Kingdom, I am a barbarian like John the Baptist, wild at heart and dangerous.

Cheap Words, Costly Life

Joy Davidman, an American poet, writer, a radical communist, and an atheist declared: “One sanctimonious hypocrite makes a hundred unbelievers”.

Joy Davidman knew intimately this dictum she had pronounced because, later on in life, she converted to the Christian faith when she married the famed Oxford don, C.S. Lewis as her second husband.

At the risk of being redundant, Davidman intentionally employed using an adjective which means the same as the noun-subject to highlight the ill-effect of fakery.

Davidman’s dictum applies in myriad situations that are beyond a life of faith. It can be applied in politics, economics, medicine, health care, social services, education, the judiciary, the military, business, industry, commerce, government, unionism, and law and order, just to name a few.

As one who embraces the loving grace that God has bestowed upon my life through His Son, Jesus Christ, I often wonder how many hundreds of thousands of unbelievers I have made through the way I live my life all these years.

To those who watch on, I may be the only word of God that they ever read. I may be the only glimmer of reflection of God’s light they ever see.

Approached from a round-about way in encouraging us to live in a lifestyle which we profess to live is St. Francis of Assisi’s famous advice: “Go and preach the Gospel to the world by all means. Use words only if necessary.”

As Paul says in one of his letters, we are living epistles for all to read.

"You yourselves are our letters, written on our hearts, known and read by everybody. You know that you are a letter from Christ... written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts." 2 Corinthians 3 : 3

Lifestyle and personal integrity speak louder than words. They shout out more loudly than a preachment from a pulpit.

Paul urges us to live "in truthful speech and in the power of God; with weapons of righteousness in the right hand and in the left..." 2 Corinthians 6 : 7

Let me live my life as God has intended for me so I may not do an injustice to His Kingdom's cause on earth.

The Heart of Teaching

Often we hear of the art of teaching.

How often have we heard of the heart of teaching?

Similar to all players in any arena of human endeavour, teaching falls into three categories: 1) as a job; 2) as a profession; and 3) as a personal response to a calling.

As a job, teaching is good.

A teacher is a paid well, and the working day is relatively short, about five-and-half to six hours per day, never mind the school year is only 200 days.

Having said that, if viewed and experienced as a job, teaching is a hard job indeed. A teacher has to daily plan and perform, contend with non-compliant and misbehaving students, belligerent parents, some over-zealous colleagues, and top-down curriculum expectations that translate into performance indicators by hard-nosed administrators.

Boy! Is it worth it? Give me a break!

As a profession, teaching takes on a noble tone, a respectable appearance, an academic and scholarly discourse, a learned pursuit, and, perhaps, an opportunity to make a difference.

However, as a profession, formal policies and procedures (developed to safeguard the welfare of those who serve in it in the first place) may ultimately reduce teaching to become an exercise in maintaining the status quo, as Neil Postman of Columbia University once put it, “Teaching as a Conservative Activity”.

What are you saying, Tom? I shall explain by way of the following observations.

When teaching is viewed and experienced as a personal response to a calling (that’s where the word “vocation” comes from), a teacher sees more clearly what the calling is all about. A teacher begins to serve in myriad ways to meet the needs of the learners, be they learning needs, social-emotional needs, or physical needs.

The key is service—the rolling up one’s sleeves to do whatsoever that needs to be done to help the learner meet needs.

To do “whatsoever” is HUGE!

It translates into working longer than five-and-half hours a day, offering help at preparation periods and lunch breaks (often in abandoned defiance of collective agreement guidelines), taking a sick child home, celebrating a child's successes, touching the inner heart and spirit of the students and their families, and perhaps, spending a few days more than 200 in a year to prepare for an awesome, exciting, and potentially life-changing-and-transcending growth experience for the students placed in our care.

That’s the heart of teaching. It goes way beyond the art of teaching. It steps outside the bureaucratic box labeled "teacher welfare" to facilitate learning, growth, and love in students for their welfare.

Ultimately, teaching is not at all about me, the teacher.

It’s all about them!

The key ingredient of leadership in any worthwhile human enterprise is altruistic service to others, not self; and educational leadership should reflect no less.

And, I am humbled and honoured to have this precious opportunity to serve in making this world a better place, one student at a time.

The blessing of being able to do so is all mine!

Life and Art

I was artistically challenged when I was a young child. I could not draw, paint, or play a musical instrument.

However, the very first art lesson I received was when my uncle firmly placed his right hand over mine and guided me to write my first Chinese calligraphy on rice paper as a rite of scholarly passage at age four.

At school age, I was taught and exposed to the heroic force and flowery elegance of language when my parents encouraged me to read the classic poems and laments of heroes in Chinese history.

I learned that the “tour de force” of Chinese poetry could fan the flames and command the direction of patriotism and revolutions alike.

I guess that was the germinal stages of development in my innate artistic seedling.

In my teen years, I discovered my love for language and its nuances while attending an all-boys ivy league high school. I began to love English poetry and essays.

Though English was my second language (We spoke Cantonese at home), I excelled in writing English, its grammatical application, and the subtleties of the language in poetry and song lyrics.

At 17, I did very well in English Literature and Writing in the University of London Advance Level Syllabus High School exam.

As a hobby, I began to write poetry, and even attempted two original song lyrics to guitar music as a teenager.

My love of the English language continued as I elected to be in an English Honours program in my second year at the University of Manitoba towards my first degree.

Language is an art of expression. Thus, it was not a far fetch for me to fall in love with another form of artistic expression: photography.

I began finding poetic expressions in the world around me through the view finder of a camera lens.

Over the course of three decades, I have taken countless photographic images of my world, documenting the events of my life.

Yes. Plenty of baby pictures of our children.

I attempted my first watercolour painting in 1982 when we were vacationing in a friend’s summer cottage by the Northumberland Strait in New Brunswick.

Using my two-year-old’s watercolour paint set and whatever paper that laid around, I painted two images: my two-year-old’s face and a New Brunswick beer bottle. Debbie’s remark was: “Not bad, Tom.”

I never picked up a paint brush again… for a long, long time… until Christmas of 1990.

It was a wintry morning during the Christmas vacation. Nobody was up yet. I once again borrowed my son’s (forgot whose) watercolour paint set and began painting what I saw through the window of my study… the big spruce outside with a shroud of freshly fallen fluff, sparking occasionally in the rays of the rising sun.

The end-result was, startling myself, not too bad!

I showed Debbie at breakfast time. She encouraged me to get some “real artist stuff” and pursue this new-found delight.

That was 18 years ago, and, proverbially, I never looked back.

I have been painting watercolours for 18 years. I have held about a dozen art shows over the years.

Purportedly, one of my paintings is hung in a church in Tokyo, Japan, and another is in the office of a general in Lisbon, Portugal.

Over the years, I have discovered that my techniques and subject matter have certainly broadened, but my style has become uniquely my own.

I love to share with others this passion of mine. I have been conducting a noon-hour watercolour painting club for students for the past 17 years! I have also been invited to conduct workshops for teachers annually.

Guess what Debbie has given me this past Christmas?

A classy painting easel and an acrylic painting kit.

“It’s time you should expand your horizon with mediums,” Debbie bubbled.

I guess it will be another brave new world for me to enter into.

Who says an old dog cannot learn new tricks?

New Trick for an Old Dog

Music has always been an important and joyous part of my life since I was a little boy. By osmosis, I began to be immersed in the pop music of the day and, surprisingly, fine classical music of by-gone eras.

As a teenager, I was mesmerized by the romanticism of the stories and the melancholic minor keys predominantly employed in ballets such as “House of the Rising Sun”, “Five Hundred Miles”, and, strangely enough, the theme song to an animated space adventure series of the ‘50’s, called “Fireball”.

My spirit leaped into action. With a couple of friends, at age 16, I formed a folk group, called “The Ripples”.

“The Ripples” did very well over the three years of its shelf-life, receiving popular acclaim in the local folk scene. We were invited to sing from campus to campus. We even performed in a city-wide folk competition at the concert hall.

Totally musically illiterate, I just learned to strum a few guitar chords from my band-mates. Having no musical training, I became very frustrated at how much I would like to do with music that I could not.

That frustration lasted long enough!

Two years ago, I decided to learn to play the guitar from a teacher.

Little did I truly know I’d experience the adage that “practice makes perfect”.

It was a daily grind, everyday for two years, with practicing the chromatic scale, the guitar version of pre-chopsticks.

Two years later, with about sixty 30-minute-lessons under my belt, I performed in public twice, not at all perfectly, “Romance de Amor”, admittedly a difficult classical piece.

Even my wife conceded that wasn’t that bad at all.

Debbie encourages me with this musical pursuit all the time. Her encouragement has helped me tremendously on those days when I didn’t feel like fingering the chromatic scale anymore.

Learning to play classical guitar helps me to stretch my stubby fingers, making them more limber to do other things, such as bar-chords.

By any standard, I am by no means good at the guitar yet.

But, I am pleased with the honest and simple fact that I now play the guitar, instead of pretending to play it as I have done my entire life.

Yes. Practice does make perfect.

And, yes again. An old dog can learn new tricks.