Don't you know who I am?

I suspect that tempers boil a little quicker in hot climates. Make the weather particularly humid, and it gets even quicker. Add an Air Asia flight to the mix, and the boiling point is probably brought down a good (or bad) ten degrees.

When I first came to Sabah, I came knowingly as a servant. I came determined to accept whatever situation I was put in. This proved harder than I had thought it would be, though sometimes the situations I found myself in were far easier than I had expected (and also sometimes far harder). I was sometimes looked after very well, sometimes not at all. Often I was given nice, comfortable accommodation. Often that accommodation came with heavy responsibilities, eg. looking after 8 teenage boys. I was required, I suppose, to put Philippians 4:12-13 to the test.

This time round, I told myself that I was going to come with no expectations, to once again accept whatever situation I found myself in. If I was treated like a celebrity, so be it. If I was treated like dirt, well, I didn't much fancy that, but so be it, I suppose. But in my heart I said, "But really they should treat me like a long-lost friend."

And in Tawau that's how I was treated, mostly. In KK it's been a bit different so far. The friend who was supposed to pick me up from the airport didn't. The room that I had stayed in on my first night here - small but nice, and with an en-suite - had been changed to a smaller one, with no en-suite, and where the adjoining communal bathroom seemed to have no hot water and not even really something I would consider a shower.

Pride, of course, kicks in very quickly in these circumstances. "Don't you know who I am?" the fleshly spirit rages.

Yes, there are many in Malaysia with better accommodation than I will have tonight. Yes, it is annoying that I was not collected from the airport. Yes, it is frustrating that these are my friends who seem to be letting me down.

Then I think of a garden where the best of all men knelt crying and sweating blood while his closest friends slept and their spirits began to prepare to abandon, even deny, him. If anyone deserved to say, "Don't you know who I am?", it was him. Yet he never did. The one time he declared his identity, it was at an impromptu and shoddy trial for his death, and the declaration sealed his fate.

My flesh tells me I should not have to put up with this on a holiday. "Go and book yourself into a hotel where at least they'll book you a taxi and give you breakfast", it says. But then my mind is half-drawn back to the one who can show me how to handle this situation properly, and I am humbled.

Who am I? I am nothing, if I am not like Him.

Over the mountains and the sea

If you are comparing Kota Kinabalu to other South-East Asian cities, you may find it small and laid-back. It isn't as inexplicably quiet as its neighbour, Bandar Seri Begawan, and the constant traffic jams make it seem less than idyllic. But to one side you see lush, jungle-thick mountains stretching out as guardians over the city and to the other you see water, and islands, and boats wandering out to bring the two together.

Sabah Reflections #1: On being foreign (and not especially humble)

I’m not sure how regular my internet access will be over the next two weeks, so my blogging may well be sporadic at best. This post is being written offline while the ideas are fresh in my mind and will be uploaded as soon as an opportunity arises. It’s early evening in Kota Kinabalu – the end of my first day back in Sabah. It’s been a day of ups and downs, not helped perhaps by the fact that I did not get to eat anything until around 12:30. But it’s also been a day of wonderful rememberings and reflections. Some solitude in the afternoon afforded me a lovely leisurely time roaming the familiar streets of KK, going to old haunts and taking far more photos than I was actually aware of. You can expect to see some uploaded here presently, but I might just focus on thoughts for the time being.

Returning to a place that was once very familiar is a strange experience. The first few days, I suspect, are a mix of delighting in becoming reacquainted with it all and being reminded of things that you had not once thought about since leaving, some of them good, some of them not as good.

It’s amazing, for instance, how simply being back in Malaysia helps me make sense of aspects of my life here that had become distant memories, even beginning to take on the atmosphere of myth. My writings from the first half of last year, for instance, attest that while living here I grew in God in ways that, back home, I have come to question, even potentially doubting that it ever happened. Being back here I can see why. There is something so humbling about life here, at least for a foreigner. You could live in far less resourced places, but enough things just won’t work, or simply don’t work how you’d expect, that you either become very quickly angry, or learn that the world does not revolve around you. There’s also a gratitude for simple blessings that develops in a place like Sabah. Functioning hot water systems can come, appropriately, to seem luxuries. Drinking water can be an unalloyed pleasure. On the other hand, rarely knowing how to do some of the most basic things has a similar effect, I suspect, to being an adult who, for whatever reason, loses the ability to walk and must learn to do so again.

When faced with humbling situations, there are two choices: accepting humility, or being humiliated. The latter regularly stems out of pride and leads only to further hardness of heart. The former leads to joy and gratitude: the sort of gratitude that, 18 months ago, prompted me to write this simple poem/prayer, which I will share with you today:

My heart is full

(sweet syrup of

your love, and each

and every gift; with sap

my tree-trunk spirit fills);

my hands, though empty,

better suited are to reach

inside my heart and take

full quota of this

liquid-blessing. Full

my heart to overflowing.

(Blessed be the hands that give.)