There must be more than this.

In the song Consuming Fire written by Tim Hughes, there is a line that goes, "There must be more than this/O Breath of God come breathe within./There must be more than this/Spirit of God we wait for You".

There has been a fear in me for some time now, that this is it. That for the next half a century that I hope to live on to, every day is going to be how it is today - routine, aimless and dull.

Yes, the environment in which I operate in will change. I am working now, but not for long. I will be studying in university soon. Thereafter, I would be thrown into another working environment again. Life marches on indeterminately, as is the fate of all put on earth till a common end comes to us. Yet, will there be more?

A long long time ago, somewhere in my late primary and early secondary school days, I believed that "more" referred to love. You know, that wonderful thing that causes butterflies in your stomach and makes you obsess over the object of your fancy for days on end, stretching even to years. I believed in that marvellous castle in the clouds called True Love and I chased that fantasy for some time, but it was mere obsession on my part, I realised, nothing more.

Somehow that belief broke at the epochal moment when Jeniffer Aniston and Brad Pitt broke up. Well, I would soon come to realise that divorces are not that rare after all, and true love hardly stays true. The magical bubble had burst.

Subtlely, my paradigm shifted. It was not a love of man that gave more meaning to the lives that we trudge in. It is the love of God, and love for God. True value and worth comes from doing things that will benefit others and honour God.

Why put God into the picture you ask? Isn't doing good for others enough? Because God helps to distinguish good from good. It's evident that we can distinguish good from bad well enough even with our flawed conscience, but how can you distinguish one good from another? With the limited resource that you have (be it time, money, effort..), what determines what you do? I believe it's the revelation of God from the "Spirit of God".

Then again, it's never that clear cut and straightforward. What now, even if I know what "more" is? How do I apply it? It seems like the daily life leaves little room for doing anything other than work, eat and sleep. How do I squeeze some time out to influence others positively? That's one of the reasons why I think Chee Keen is so incredible. Even at the busiest points, he has the time to go back to BB to help the juniors. He has the time for playing in the worship team. He has time to comfort others. All these things that I yearn but have lost.

I will not deny that there's still a small piece of vacuum somewhere in me. A final piece of a jigsaw I have yet to find. Or perhaps don't want to find. A remnant rebel. I am close to it, I know.

In another song, Sara Groves sang, "Remember surrender/Remember the rest/Remember that weight lifting off of your chest/And realising that it's not up to you, and it never was". It's a meaningless struggle I know.

Because it was never up to me.