Make your own Sunny.side Up Birdie singing on a tree

I love paper toys!!!!!
Here's one I tried with my birdie~~~~

print it out and make your own birdie~~~

enjoy!

xxx

The Portrait of the Grown-up Lady who tamed a Fox

I went to this shopping mall a while ago and it was decorated with "Le Petit Prince" by Antoine De Saint-Exupery
It made me want to read the novel again and so I did... and I am so inspired by it!
I read it as a kid and loved it, but this time round, I think I got something out of it and it inspired me to do a series of drawings...

This is called "The Portrait of the Grown-up Lady who tamed a Fox"

If you remember the story of The Little Prince, it started with the narrator talking about a drawing that he did when he was a child. 
He read about boa constrictors from a book which said "Boa constrictors swallow their prey whole, without chewing it. After that they are not able to move, and they sleep through the six months that they need for digestion."
So he made his first drawing, which was a picture of a boa constrictor digesting an elephant.
He showed his drawing to the grown-ups, and asked them whether the drawing frightened them.
Here was their reply:
"Frighten?  Why should anyone be frightened by a hat?"

The narrator continued the story with his opinion towards the grown-ups.
"Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them."

Then the narrator, now a "grown-up" pilot, got stranded in the middle of the Sahara desert and met the little prince.  The little prince was a traveler from a small asteroid and had traveled to different planets before coming to our planet Earth.
The author describes the world of "grown-ups" as the little prince described the planets he had been to and the people he had met.
Those planets were devoid of imagination, they were based on numbers and "matters of consequence" more than dreams or even reality, and was no place for true royalty.

It reminded me of how Jesus loves the little children.

When Jesus was questioned about who would rank highest in the kingdom of heaven he used a child as an example: “I’m telling you, once and for all, that unless you return to square one and start over like children, your not even going to get a look at the kingdom, let alone get in.” (Matthew 18: 2)

When people become too"serious" about themselves, about what other people think, about numbers and statistics, they forget their purpose and their dreams.  Sometimes it saddens me that many Christians are like that... focusing on their jobs... their earthly riches... their social status.... and ignoring the really important things like working for God's Kingdom...

Grown-ups may find the drawing of the boa constricor digesting an elephant silly.
But Paul says,  "The Message that points to Christ on the Cross seems like sheer silliness to those hell-bent on destruction, but for those on the way of salvation in makes perfect sense.” (1 Cor. 1:18)


“Grown-ups” will not understand the message of the Cross because it seems like utter nonsense to the world of cause and effect, or how Saint-Exupery puts it, "matters of consequence"
They would think, if God truly became a man, why would He allow himself to be executed as a common criminal?  If God is the God who created the entire universe, why would He care about insignificant people like us and want us to have a relationship with Him?
But the proof of faith and belieft is in this very relationship, which to "grown-ups" may seems like "sheer silliness", or a fairy tale for children.
We see Jesus as the King of Kings and Lord of Lords not because He has proven it by the riches and powers He had, but because He loved us enough to die for us, it is our relationship with Jesus that matters.

God doesn't love us because we are unique, we are unique because God loves us.

The little prince had a very unique flower on his planet that he loved and care for so much.  But when he came to the planet Earth, he saw a garden of roses and realized that his flower was common, not unique and valuable as he had imagined.  The little prince then befriended a fox who taught him the most important lesson.
The fox asked the little prince to tame him, and explained that one is tamed by being loved and valued.  The fox taught the little prince that one cannot judge another by seeing with the eyes, instead, one has to see and judge with the heart. 
The little prince realized that his flower was really special, not because she looks different from other roses, but because he has loved and cared for it.

I hope you understand what I'm talking about.... I do realize that I'm not good at writing.... so I'm sticking to drawing......

If you want to read The Little Prince...
here's an online version The Little Prince

More Little Prince inspired stuff next time :)

God's Love and Ours

I'll continue with the Love theme because that's what life's all about.

Love for God and love for others.

God's perfect love couldn't be explained better than this:

"Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God.
Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.
Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.
This is how God showed his love among us:
He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.
This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.


We know that we live in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.
And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world.
If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God.
And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him.
In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment,
because in this world we are like him.
There is no fear in love.
But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment.
The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

We love because he first loved us."
(1 John 4: 7-19)

Amen!

A little exercise on Love

I know this should be almost daily doodle.... but now it's becoming almost monthly  :p

but I'm still here!!!  :)

It's not Valentine's... but suddenly LOVE is surrounding me.....

I'm doing a study at Church on a book called "Crazy Love" by Francis Chan.... how can we be crazily in love with God?
I went to "More Love", worshipping God with Stream of Praise.... how can we have more love for God?
I am planning my wedding with my Fiance. :)  I know I am crazily in love with him.... and I know that I love him more and more as each day goes by....

Could I have the same love for God?  and even more??
There was a moment this week when I thought... I don't want to go to work... I just want to read God's word.  So I took the day off and read the Bible.  and I did that for 2 days...
Am I starting to fall madly in love with God?

Do I really know what love is?

There's a little exercise I read from the book "Crazy Love" that is quite useful....

What does God mean by love?

He tells us about love in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8

"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.


Love never fails."

These words are so familiar that we don't really think much about them...
but in his book, Francis mentioned that we can do a little exercise with these verses.
Take the word Love or It from each phrase and substitude with your name. (e.g Love is patient will become Maisie is patient for me)  Do it for every phrase.

I have to admit... I failed this exercise on love..

hopefully when I do it again next time.. it doesn't feel like lying when I fill in the blanks.

Happy Father's Day!

My dad passed away 7 years ago and went to heaven...
My father on earth is not by my side, but I found my Father in Heaven.
No... He has found me..
and what Nicky Gumbel says in the Alpha Course describes perfectly our relationship with our Father....

"Lord Radstock was staying in a hotel in Norway in the mid-nineteenth century. He heard a little girl playing the piano down in the hallway. She was making a terrible noise: ‘Plink ... plonk ... plink ...’. It was driving him mad! A man came and sat beside her and began playing alongside her, filling in the gaps. The result was the most beautiful music. He later discovered that the man playing alongside was the girl’s father, Alexander Borodin, composer of the opera Prince Igor."

Love your parents and treasure them... because they love you so much too.

Happy Father's Day.

doodles on hunger

I was reading the book Searching Issues by Nicky Gumbel to prepare for the Alpha course.  It's a book that contains the seven most common questions raised about Christianity during the course.

I came across a question asking "What about other religions?"
I won't put an in depth explanation here to talk you into becoming a Christian, but I think everyone has a hunger to know what is the purpose of life?  Where are we heading to?
At different stages of life, we set goals, we meet them... and we set higher goals... until one day, you may find that it's not what you want at all... 

Then what do we want?  Why are we here?  There always seems to be a gap in our hearts that we need to fill, that is why we are never satisfied, we always try to fill that gap with different things: money, power, love etc etc...

But nothing seems to work... why do we always have this feeling of emptiness in our hearts?  What do we need to fill that gap in our heart?  Deep down no one is satisfied by earthly riches, we know there is more to life.  In every heart there is a hunger for God, but not everyone knows about it.
So we try to feed our hunger with familiar things, i want more of this, more of that.... but we never have enough....

So how can we fill the gap in our heart?

Blaise Pascal, a French scientist and philosopher, says this:
"There is a God shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, the Creator, made known through Jesus."

A God shaped gap can only be filled by God Himself, and Jesus is the only way to God.
The great thing about being a Christian is that we can personally know Jesus, and He can satisfy our hunger, for Jesus is the Bread of Life.

Let's talk more about the Bread of Life next time  :)

I filled in a bit of color this time  :)

almost daily doodle- on trouble

I'm finally back!!  Sorry I haven't been doodling lately....  I've been busy with the TKO project during Easter!!

I was originally planning to do a Easter special... but I didn't had time to do that.. :(

Lots of things have been happening lately... some bad.. some okay... mostly good!

The bads are mostly stuff at work....  these illustrations are my night time job... I have to design stuff that I don't really care about during the day, and lately it has been taking more time than I would like and it's draining all my energy... with no energy to do anything constructive after work, I think a lot... about the future.. about the path I should take... I worry about this and that... what if... what if....?


We have so many troubles and worries daily...... we think about all kinds of situations and all possiblities...
we worry about everything...
it just reminded me of these verses from the Bible..

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink;
or about your body, what you will wear.
Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes?
Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns,
and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.
Are you not much more valuable than they?
Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?

.........
So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’
For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them.
But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.
Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.
Each day has enough trouble of its own."
Matthew 6: 25-34