Be Found in the Kiss : right in the season where He knows I wouldn't survive without.

A kiss is a very personal act; a powerful one. 

A kiss can be an act of respect; I knew that because I grew up giving my parents goodbye kiss every time I went out to leave the house. And when I came back from outside in to the house, I had to say "I'm home." and gave my parents a kiss too.  But did you know that two thousand years ago there was a woman wet Jesus's feet with her tears and then wiped them with her hair and kissed them and poured perfume on them? What kind of a kiss was that?

Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—as her great love has shown. But whoever has been forgiven little loves little. (Luke 7:47, NIV)

That act of intimate kiss was a sign of a great love, Jesus recognizes; she had shown Him much love. So, I think Christine Caine got it right when she argues, this expression of much love matters to Him. 

 

Be found in the kiss:  for this season of life He knows I wouldn't survive without His kiss of anointing and revelation

I spent Friday and Saturday the 12th and 13th March 2021 with a sister, for our first Colour Conference, "Be Found in the Kiss".  But my own heavenly kiss(es) was given graciously to me a month ahead of the conference -- as He hasn't stopped speaking to me since I arrived in this city.  

Arriving in a time of pandemic -- being on my own most of the time, adjusting in a new city and country, hit by a cruel incident just within two weeks, which happened just days before He gave me a rare task (so rare that it scared me, so rare that even Google has no clues) -- He knew it from the very beginning that I need Him to speak to me.

And so He has been, including these two heavenly kisses of revelation just a month before the conference:

1. A kiss: "... with My loving eye on you."

 

Monday the 8th February 2021 was particularly more meaningful to me than it was in past years, because it marks the fifteenth year of my dad’s passing. But I started that week, crying for a different reason. That start of the week I found myself bitter, angry, as I was accusing God... of wanting to hurt me. I began being suspicious of God’s intentions since the day before, Sunday the 7th.
 

He trusts me with a special task that started in the third week of November 2020 -- I expected it to have ended by, latest, first week of February. But it didn’t. (if you notice the irony: it’s His task, yet I was the one with a deadline in mind. Sighs).

And so I began to accuse Him of having the intention to hurt me. I had been holding grudges against Him for three days then, when His kiss came on Tuesday the 9th February.  That morning, I started to tear up as I read Psalm 32:8.

I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go;
    I will counsel you with my loving eye on you.

I wept in repentance and in awe of His answer. Of course. Silly me. Of course He would never harm me. Of course He would never hurt me.

But as if it wasn’t enough, what He told me through Psalm 32:8 wasn’t the only kiss in that start of the week. 

 

2. A kiss: "... a valentine to a faithless world"

By Wednesday the 10th February it had been about a couple of days too then, I had been haunted by these phrases from a song: This world is Yours... My God, this world is Yours.

Only on that snowy Wednesday at around 2 AM, as soon as I was woken up the phrases were in my head again.  Before I began to pray I thought I should look it up. It’s a Hillsong’s own; “Valentine” is about Him pursuing “every wayward heart”, He is a “valentine to a faithless world”. 

• Literally this world and everything in it, there is nothing that he couldn't say "Mine" to. Because all is His. I am His, just as the person He asks me to pray for, is His too. 
• If I could grow care about someone just because I have been asked so intensely to pray for that person, what I have for the person is still a minuscule compared to His much greater love for this person.
  

How could a God who owns this universe love so much.

Be found in the kiss: for the hard work in harvest time.

Right after this incident at Simon's house "Jesus traveled about from one town and village to another, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God." (Luke 8:1) Do you know who were with Him? Not just The Twelve, but apparently also some women "who had been cured of evil spirits and diseases: Mary (called Magdalene) from whom seven demons had come out; Joanna the wife of Chuza, the manager of Herod’s household; Susanna; and many others. These women were helping to support them out of their own means."

Jesus calls women for His cause too, or as Christine Caine puts it, Jesus "activated" women, they followed Him on a mission -- "we've been found in the kiss, but there's so many more to be reached and restored."

I think that resonates with me; I spent some number of years ministering to marginalized women.  I knew by statistics of that particular profile of people in that location alone where I was, there's way so many more to be reached and restored.

Since the screen puts up Caine's profile as she began speaking, I was actually amazed how "fitting" (for the lack of word) she is as a founder of A21; she doesn't look 55 in the first place, and to know that she founded A21 when she was 40 that just astonished me. The fact that I enjoyed her expository style (something I rarely find in this Sunday family I've been part of only since November 2020) and her passionate speech style, is quite refreshing to me personally.

The current rare task He trusts me with may still be daunting to me, emotionally draining, physically taxing; a rare task that I never know when it would end, and I may never know the why behind it. But I realize, other missions are out there and coming too, and still, the workers are few. By His grace He chose me to work in this harvest time, and I've seen how His mercy sustains me, but I'm made aware that I would always need His heavenly kiss of divine encounters and revelation and anointing, in this season of hard work for the harvest.

 

Women in MBA: Show 'Em (What You're Made Of)

An article our Dean recently wrote on perceptions of the MBA somehow reminded me of one of the Hillary Duff's chick flicks I watched a couple of years ago, 'Beauty and the Briefcase'. Starred as a fashion journalist Duff was given a mission by Cosmopolitan to write an article on "finding love in the business world".  Undercover.  On her first day of secretarial 'work' at a financial company in New York, a comment she made (of course, gleefully) was, "There's so many men!"  

Not only the business industry, I'm not sure if it probably takes a longer time than we expect to overcome the traditional perception that men still outnumber women in MBA classrooms. Anyway, I'm now sharing here my experience of and thoughts over some 10 weeks' old in the full-time MBA. 

A (not so) male-dominated MBA program: my experience so far
We were told that our batch, Ben Eibhinn, is different; no locals, very much diverse (both in nationalities and professional background) and... we have more female students.  Although I had always been part of a multinational working culture, the diversity of our class has so far taught me:

1.  Femininity and leadership: not about being 'too nice'
I think I'll make an extreme example. Growing up being trained how to dress well by my royal, protective mother, I'm practically seen most of the time 'looking nice' and neat (as girls normally point out to me).  Long-haired, with a typical Indonesian obedience, taking seriously all tasks given, introverted, far from competitive nature and soft-spoken, an immediate (male) manager of a past job labelled me as "Miss Nice Girl". Easily. 

Although I have long realized that Singapore has one of the worst workplaces in the region due to bad office politics, that was quite the first time I realized how femininity could be perceived as a sign of weakness... and how wrong such perception is.  I did leave the company -- I left its leadership, to be precise. 

More women are getting through the glass ceiling as more and more female leaders rising to top position in business.  Yet, primary biases on female leaders of being too nice and emotional still exist; all the debate and studies on gender and leadership continue to intrigue and challenge our perceptions.  Hopefully. 

In the classroom context, both academics and my fellow classmates are there to equip me to be an effective leader.  I found myself from time to time pondering over the shape of a leadership style that is both genuine in its femininity and being effective as I feel comfortable of being myself.  I'm still working on it. 


2.  Female leaders and their mentor(s)
Mentorship exists in MBA programs.  I was encouraged reading articles on how female MBAs are apparently benefited from pursuing mentorship even beyond the classroom as successful female leaders are known to choose their mentor at their workplace, mostly senior men in the organization. Leaders are constantly put under the spotlight, receive criticism as they take risks and make mistakes; and leaders work hard to learn from all of those. It makes sense to me to have a mentor as a sounding board and whom you can take feedback, encouragement from.

Speaking of which, I am grateful to have access to few selected men as lifetime mentors, although they're now scattered in different parts of the world.  An example is the most recent major life decision I made: to choose taking an MBA in a country foreign to me.  Either a South African or a Malaysian pastor in their 30s, a humble busy American businessman in his early 50s, fathers of a couple of friends (American and Srilankan) in their 50s and 60s are the men I took out of my rather limited list of qualified senior men I purposefully went to for an opinion. 
And now, I am more than thankful to have and treasure a male mentor who takes me seriously in aiming for a distinction.  


To female (future) MBAs and leaders; shine. Show 'em what you're made of.  No matter how male-dominated it could be.