Ravi On Marriage

*Marriage is a blend - not just of bodies and affections but, ultimately, of two people walking in stride through the hard moments that would divide any other friendship.

*The chances are that if you marry somebody in violation of your parents' will, you are playing a high stake games as you enter the future.

*Any time you violate an authority that has been put in place by God, you need to be twice as sure you are doing the right thing.

*Chivalry in love has nothing to do with the sweetness of appearance. It has everything to do with the tenderness of heart determined to serve. This is the first hard lesson to learn. You do not act under the impetus of charm but out of a commitment to make someone's life the joy you want it to be. In the early days of marriage, joy precedes the act. Tragically, as the years go by joy can be severed from act until finally, the act itself is no more. This ought not to be. Over time it is the companionship that brings joy, and service is the natural outworking of the joy of commitment. Failure to act kills it.

*Marriage is the harmony of God synchronizing two wills with the will of the Father. When that happens, the heart resounds with the feeling, even though it involves sacrifices.

*When you will is committed to God, He carries you when all else seems spent, to rescue what you had invested by your dedication.

*The work that you do is a mean of providing for the family's needs, but the work you do must never become identical to the life you live. Many homes that have fallen apart wouldn't not have done so if it had been understood and acted upon that there is a time to work and a time to leave work.

*Marriage brings face to face two people committed to God, whose face is distinctively revealed in each as they see other in the light of God, shining on each countenance. God brought them close to each other because each was the other's answer from God, to rescue them from being alone.

* You can be sure that in every marriage the storm will hit. it is in your deep immersion into the Word that your roots will be able to hold the home together. The Word should be the foundation of your home.

*Our confidence should really lay in the strength of the Lord. That is what a well-guarded prayer life can reveal about us, that our trust is not in ourselves but in seeking God's strength for what we do. Prayer is not a substitute for action, but prayer under girds action with the strength that makes the difference.

*Your personal life must be ordered by prayer as a commitment each day. It should not be seen as a burden but as a privilege to seek the face of God before you face the day. However you order your life, the temptations that will stalk you and the conflicts that will confront or confound you can never be met in your own strength.

*The truth is that God calls us to first practise truth in private so that its public expression is merely an outgrowth of what has already taken place in the heart and not a declaration over a hollow life. Developing that strength of character in private is foundational.

*Become a man or woman of prayer. Let your devotional life be the beacon that guides you through the tough terrain you will face. Let your heart and mind be kept close to the principal calling of your life, which is to hunger and thirst after God and his righteousness. Make your day one in which God gets your best so that others share in the rewards of your devotion. Let the thoughts and intents of your heart be guided and shaped by time spent is His presence. Being in God's presence affects all other relationships for the better.

Miracles - Lewis

>Why men believe in the uniformity of Nature:
In the first place we are creatures of habit. We expect new situations to resemble old ones. It is a tendency which we share with animals; one can see it working, often to very comic results, in dogs and cats. In the second place, when we plan our actions, we have to leave out of account the critical possibility that Nature might not behave as usual tomorrow, because we can do nothing about it. It is not worth bothering about because no action can be taken to meet it. And what we habitually put out of our minds we soon forget. The picture of uniformity thus comes to dominate our minds without rival and we believe it.
Both these causes are irrational and would be just as effective and building up a false belief as in building up a true one. But I'm convinced that these is a there is a third cause. Said the late Sir Arthur Eddington:"In science, we sometimes have convictions which we cherish but cannot justify; we are influenced by some inmate sense of the fitness of things." This may sound a perilously subjective and aesthetic criterion; but can one doubt that it is a principal source of our believe in uniformity?A universe in which unprecedented and unpredictable events were at every moment flung into Nature would not merely be inconvenient to us: it would be profoundly repugnant. We will not accept such a universe on any terms whatever. It is utterly detestable to us. It shocks our "sense of the fitness of things".

>We are in the habit of talking as if laws of Nature caused events to happen; but they have never cause any event at all. Thus in one sense the laws of Nature cover the whole field of space and time; in another, what they leave out is precisely the whole real universe - the incessant torrent of actual events which makes up true history. That must come from somewhere else. To think the laws can produce it is like think that you can create real money by simply doing sums.

>The fact which is one respect the most obvious and primary fact, and through which alone you have access to all the other facts, may be precisely the one that is most easily forgotten - forgotten not because it is so remote and abstruse but because it is so near and so obvious. And that is exactly how the supernatural has been forgotten.

>On prayer: The Christian is not to ask whether this or that event happened because of a prayer. He is rather to believe that all events without exception are answers to prayer in the sense that whether they are grantings or refusals the prayers of all concerned and their needs have been taken into account. All prayers are heard, though not all prayers are granted. We must not picture destiny as a film unrolling for the most part on its own, but in which our prayers are sometimes allowed to insert additional items. On the contrary; what the film displays to us as it unrolls already contains the result of our prayers and all our other acts.
There is no question whether an evet has happened because of your prayer. When the events you prayed for occurs your prayers has always contributed to it. When the opposite events occurs your prayer has never been ignored; it has been considered and refused, for your ultimate good and the good of whole universe. But this is, and must remain, a matter of faith.

Graffiti Bali

Bali Trip - Nov'08

Bali surfer




















Payer found in our hotel compound




















The real mannequin. Don't play-play, they can dance man...















Sunset at Tanah Lot















Tanah Lot















Bali Girl. They wear nice kebaya whenever attending ceremony/prayer.






























Roasting coffee beans. She works 10 hrs a day




















Performer at Barong Dance




















Cool "live band" for prayer ceremony















Local beer




















Babi Guling Rice

Pork Satay