Reconciliation.

I guess it is not by chance that God has chosen to wake me up at 4:56am this morning. I woke up thinking " Oh my, it's so early! What should I do?" And truthfully, the first thing I thought about wasn't doing my time alone with God but a nice up of hot cereal since it was a little chilly. However, at the back of my mind or deep within my spirit, I sort of knew what I actually had to do. Hence after preparing my cuppa, I sat down with two books- the bible and the purpose driven life. I've been quite blessed to be able to borrow that book from a friend whom I've committed to God to be saved in the past...Haha..It's really amazing, the way He works. Somehow, He seems to have worked pretty fast in her life. Praise God for that! Anyway, instead of starting with the bible, I somehow started with the Rick Warren book. I'm not sure if I'm wrong in doing this but somehow I just felt like I needed some guided teaching if you would call it that. hah.

As usual, I randomly flipped the pages to a particular chapter. This time, I approached Chapter 20 on Restoring Broken Fellowship. Immediately, a sister came into mind. From the chapter I learnt two truths. That God has given us the ministry of reconciliation and that we have to WORK for peace and not only expect to feel peaceful. But being peaceful doesn't mean that we run away from the conflict or person. The key is that in a conflict, we do not attack the person, but we attack the problem. When we are so consumed with our feelings of bitterness and hatred for the person, we just lose sight that God really longs for us to be reconciled as part of His family. I've experienced feelings of anger, hatred and bitterness before with someone who is a non-christian. I was reminded of the experience even though it was not with relation to a fellow brother or sister in christ. Well. I would say that I didn't handle the issue in a correct manner. All of us in fact, young and hot-headed, focused more on attacking each other rather than the problem. Thrashing sessions didn't solve the problem since we more more focused on feelings rather than the problem. Yup. After I went for DEW and committed this issue to God, the DEW worker asked me to close my eyes and think back on the incident way back then and asked what I saw. I told her, I see Jesus standing there just when I was being called a 'backstabber'. And this morning, when I closed my eye again and thought back, I saw another thing, Jesus looked sad. I guess, Jesus knew and felt my hurt. But at that point in my life, I had turned away from Him and responded to this in all the wrong ways. I started to isolate myself, started to give up on myself, started to turn nasty at the same time so as to protect myself which didn't help at all. I also wanted so badly to run away. But by the grace of God, I managed to pull through. Right now, I don't know what I will feel, do, or say if I see the person or those people. I really want to restore the broken relationships. which I myself had a part in breaking. But I wonder if it matters anymore. Since we might not be seeing each other much now that we are in different places. And does it matter to them as much as it does to me? I don't want to forget that episode in my life just because of wrong decisions made. Only God can turn it all around. I pray that one day the relationships will be restored and I know that it's only possible with God. There has been several opportunities for reconciliation but I've always chosen to stay away. Haha. Just too scared lah. Will God chide me for not settling this conflict with those who do not yet know Him?