Crowning Kings

Today is a public holiday in Malaysia on the occasion of the coronation of the 15th Agung (king). It is also my birthday in Christ so I have a holiday to reflect on what it is to be in Christ for 35 years. Three and a half decades knowing Jesus or rather be known by Him. What a privilege, what inexpressible joy!
On that day when Jesus appeared in a vision and said to me, "I am alive" and "I have died for your sins". What a journey it has been. My book on memoirs of a modern missionary is already 85,000 words, the length of a Cambridge University PhD thesis. But the story is ongoing and there is no guarantee I will be publishing it soon. Crowning kings and making of governments is the art of politics. I have been following the French Presidential Election whole day and reading on French history. It is a shame that I had practically forgotten the French I learned over one Semester. A few years ago in Perth during the Society of New Testament Study meeting I listened in trance like expectation a French professor delivering her lecture in French. It is such a beautiful language and I pray that the French people will elect the President they want. It could be the start of the Sixth Republic now that the Conservatives and Socialists for the first time in 50 years will not have a candidate in the run off. If Emmanuel Macron takes the throne he will be the youngest President in French modern history at 39 years old. His rival is a youthful 48-year old Marine Le Pen.

It makes one feels old and over the hill. One of my former students gave me some encouraging words that at present I am just resting my wings so that like an eagle I will fly higher next time. For promotion comes not from the East nor from the West. It is God who puts one down and sets up another. Leadership in the Church is not something to be sought or campaigned for like the worldly kings and would be kings and Presidents. Leadership in a church could be aimed for or even desired as it is a noble task (1 Tim 3) but it is God who crowns Kings and He is the one who anoints and chooses anyone He pleases to do His will and shepherd His flock.