Thie Cave

I received a promotional email a while ago about a managed fund. It is titled saving for wealth. Isn’t that an anomaly??

Practically, it is impossible to build wealth through saving. To build an equity of $1M by putting aside $1,000 per month, it will take about 1000  months which is about 80 years!!! Sure there is the interest compounding effect…but even if the period is halved, it still takes 40 years at best and you will be 60 years old by then. And again how many people can set aside $1,000 per month?! especially if you have dependent.

Biblically speaking, Proverbs has many things to say about wealth. From my reading of Proverbs last week, saving is a smart thing to do but the aim is not to build wealth. Rather it’s for sharing in the time of needs. I can’t remember the specific verses…need to look up my notes again  Wealth is also a good thing…well basically being poor is a bad thing as poor is often associated with laziness. Having enough wealth is good to provide for own need and to share with the needy.

I’m rather surprised that no one from FOCUS has posted any blog about the recent CMS Globe Event…considering about one third that attended are blog regulars. Anyway I’m writing down few things from my perspective.

• It was the first time for CMS to run this event. (CMS runs an annual summer school which lasts for few days.) The motivation behind this is that the missionaries from Europe return to Australia during their summer break (winter here) and hence miss the summer school. I found out about this from my conversation with John Hales, the General Secretary, during dinner.
• The event is catered for uni students since the missionaries are heavily involved in student ministry. Hence, Richard Chin was invited to give a talk for the evening program. However, there were not many students there. In fact, not many young people were there…probably only a third or fewer. This is perhaps due to the exam period.
• Garage hymnal was in the evening program. Yet two thirds of the attendants are not youths. I wonder how I would feel 40 years from now sitting in a similar event with a youth band playing contemporary hymns on the stage
• The pasta dinner was great…three different pastas – Belissimo
• One of the seminars I attended was DIY ministry and ran by two missionary wives. I think the women can relate to their experience better than me   Nonetheless, I enjoy listening to their stories and see how “informal” their ministry is and God’s mercy works in many ways. They meet as many people as they can, mostly other mums. They open their home and are hospitable to their new friends. Gospel opportunities do present themselves over time.

While browsing my Christian books shelf, I found the book “Understanding People” by Larry Crabb….and I never knew I had it. I flipped it around and noticed a small writing on the corner “13E $1.”  Ahh….I must have got it from the book fair many years ago….paid $1 for it.

Got a new laptop today from work. It’s running on Windows Vista. Nice graphics, interesting interface…more artistic, user friendly, less nerdy I guess.

Interestingly, the memory usage hits 50% even with no program running in the foreground. It’s using up 1GB RAM just for sitting idle.