the story of Hagar

The life of Hagar, written in Genesis, is a very touching story. Motivated by a tape I listened to in the fellowship, I read the story again.
I am deeply impressed by the fact that our God showed his care to Hagar, which was just a maidservant. It's not difficult to imagine that Hagar had a very bad self-image. She might had a hard childhood in egypt, else she wouldn't be a servant in a family living in Canaan. As a servant, she had nothing to proud of; she had no choice in her life; she became a "machine", carrying a baby for Sarai.....
Her poor self image is probably the reason why "she became to despise her mistress when she knew she was pregant. Succeed cannot help a person with a bad self-image, on the other hand, it leads to unhealthy responses which deep down in heart, makes the person worser.
Her first touch with God cured her, but might not be fully. After the birth of Issac, Abraham sent her and her son away, she collasped in the middle of desert. I tried to imagine her thoughts at that moment: the bitterness of her whole life floated up in her heart, there isn't any body, in the middle of nowhere, she and her boy, no water...
If God didn't show up, her thoughts might lead her to dealth. "God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water." I guessed the well itself was not a miracle, it was there, but with all negative thoughts in her mind, she was unable to see the hope.
As far as I remember, after the two touches with God, the bible didn't mention Hagar anymore. I think she still suffered a lot in order to raise her son, at least her life was bitter compared with Sarai. However, she probably learnt to look at herself at a new perspective. The love from God helped her to justify herself, and the hope brought her positivity.

Blizzard 2006

A frozen pond near my apartment. 

Patience

I haven't written my journal for quite a week, as I have been concentrating on a project. I awoke at the middle of the night last night. While I was trying to sleep again, many thoughts came up, and I realized that I lost the peace and patience in God. Today, I try to slow down, spend a while on sorting the pile of papers. Suddenly, I feel much lighter, he is the one who knows the progress.

Renormalization & Self-Consistency

Recently, I'm struggling between two methods in solving a research problem. One is called renormalization, in laymen terms, it means to find a particular viewing angle so that one can make your problem 'looks' simplier. Renormalization involves forgetting some irrelevant details of the orginal problem, and of coz, 'irrelevant' is relative to your target research interest. The second method is called self-consistency, naively it means first, assume your problem belongs to a certain simple class of problems that can be solved in standard way, then see where it leads to. In the case where the conclusion is obviously not 'consisent' with the assumption, change certain parameters in the assumption until self-consistency is achieved. A few days ago, I realized these are also common methods for people to deal with real life siuations. Yet, one cannot go back and renew your decisions in the past, so in real life 'self-consistency' is not possible, but its cousin, 'self-deception' is popularly used. Yet, people who use the method of 'self-deception' always think they're just using the method 'self-consistency'! My boss wanted to stick to the method of self-consistency, and I want very much to follow the method of renormalization. If we really understand the problem well, we should be able to renormalize it! Maybe my boss also wants some 'self-deception' to easy the frustration in research !