Happy Good Friday!

Why is this day different from any other day? This is the day we remember THE DAY, alongside a few others, that made all other days matter. And so this day Lord, help me remember You.

The spiritual lesson that I’m still processing relates to the phone scam that I was involved in last week, 4/11. A few things I lost through that are –

• My personal details – name, passport number, phone numbers, address and date of birth.
• My pride, or at least a fraction of it. I was incredulous when my mother went a little too far in another scam that she was roped into many years ago, but now, I know I am equally susceptible. Was I foolish? Absolutely. But now, I’m a little more empathetic to scam victims.
•  A little sanity – now when I see an unknown number, my heart skips a beat. I wait for it to go to voicemail, check the voicemail and then block the number. I want to call back and just listen to who it is. I will look up the number online and report it as scam. And I have been getting a few of these calls each day. And a part of me wonders if that might just be true – someone used my details to create fake passport and create a money laundering bank account. Now I am a suspect in an investigation.
• A little sense of security – I am a little worried someone would just show up at the door and take me away. I am worried that someone is out there creating fake passports and misusing my personal details. I am worried about the unknown. Maybe, I should not go to China any more. 

And even though it’s Good Friday, and Christ died for the sins of the scammer and mine; I cannot help but want the scammer to be brought to justice. I want him to be caught, sent to jail, and either repent or burn in hell. As much as I hate how foolish I was, I hate even more his lies, scams and the things he took away from me. Yet on this day, I will feel rich because of the things I gained –

• An appreciation of the insidious effects of sin – it wants to pull me in, it wants me to doubt the truth, it wants me to listen only to it and not those I love and trust. It is relentless and breeds fear. It builds up a false reality and lies to keep me in it. It is deep and dark and awful and ugly.
• Experiencing “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal” – nothing on this earth is truly mine, even my “physical identity” is not safe. This does not mean that we do not try to protect our IDs or privacy, but all that can be taken away from us in an instance. When I was imagining the reality of being thrown in jail in China, I thought about losing the life that I’m currently living in an instant. No job, no family, no “future”. And the only thing I can take with me? Christ. At least that, no one else can take that away from me.
• Deepened my belief about letting the light shine in – the scammer wanted me to be in a quiet place and warned me not to tell anyone or I will implicate them. And for 1.5 hours all I heard were the lies, so much so that I started to believe in it and not want to tell Arthur. But after I called him and fact-checked with my Chinese colleagues, I could at least start entertaining the possibility that that was a scam. God has put people, community in our lives, we need to let others in, we need to let light in.
• Listen to my H-h-usband – Arthur told me not to pick up the phone or entertain those calls. I listened for a day, and then did the very thing he told me not to, the very next day. And now I need to listen, to the truth that he is telling me, that it’s a scam. I need to listen to my heavenly Husband, who bled and died for me; so I can have my safety, security and identity in Him; and not live with fear in the background. If God is for me, who can be against me? not worry about your life. Do not worry about tomorrow.

Psalm 139

1 You have searched me, Lord, and you know me.

2 You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar.
3 You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways.
4 Before a word is on my tongue you, Lord, know it completely.
5 You hem me in behind and before, and you lay your hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.

7 Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?
8 If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
9 If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea,
10 even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.
11 If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,”
12 even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.

13 For you created my inmost being you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.
15 My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
16 Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.
17 How precious to me are your thoughts,[a] God! How vast is the sum of them!
18 Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand— when I awake, I am still with you.

19 If only you, God, would slay the wicked! Away from me, you who are bloodthirsty!
20 They speak of you with evil intent; your adversaries misuse your name.
21 Do I not hate those who hate you, Lord,  and abhor those who are in rebellion against you?
22 I have nothing but hatred for them; I count them my enemies.
23 Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.
24 See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.