{"id":1822,"date":"2020-10-22T10:53:49","date_gmt":"2020-10-21T23:53:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/potterdreams.com\/clay\/?p=1822"},"modified":"2020-10-22T10:53:49","modified_gmt":"2020-10-21T23:53:49","slug":"permanency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/potterdreams.com\/clay\/permanency\/","title":{"rendered":"Permanency"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I heard a few times people quote the phrase &#8220;the only constant is Change&#8221;, and in those times, those words came into my deaf ear. It&#8217;s something as adult we all see and know, isn&#8217;t it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Just yesterday, I listened to a technology presentation on the &#8220;new&#8221; paradigm of software development. The name itself indicates that developing a software these days is a continuous development, or seems to me like a never ending job. But is this really &#8220;new&#8221;, as if the old days when people develop software, it stays there forever?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And I remember my own painful experience, when I built a system and witness it being replaced less than 5 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<p>Recently, I pick up with a heavy heart, book of Ecclesiastes to meditate upon. I don&#8217;t really like this book because it has that &#8220;down \/ depressed&#8221; tone in it. Nevertheless, I thought it&#8217;s a proper book to meditate upon during this COVID-19 season.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-pullquote\"><blockquote><p>\u201cMeaningless! Meaningless!\u201d<\/p><p>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0says the Teacher.<\/p><p>\u201cUtterly meaningless!<\/p><p>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Everything is meaningless.\u201d<\/p><cite>Ecclesiastes 1:1<\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>And to unpack that statement that <em>everything is meaningless<\/em>, we&#8217;ve to read what he wrote next, why he concluded that everything is meaningless. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Just to share what I understood from my short meditation on this: everything is meaningless because there is no permanency on this earth. Whatever things we do or will do, would not last. At one point, they all be gone or be forgotten. As painful as when we&#8217;re told that our job is redundant, or my piece of software out of my hard labor (which I am proud of) is no longer relevant, or even our children didn&#8217;t follow our path of life \/ instructions; having no permanency leads to meaninglessness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In that sense, I thank God for the wisdom He gave to the Teacher. That he is teaching us the truth that there is nothing permanent here on earth. Whatever things we build or do, they are all just temporary. Things we thought are permanent, actually they&#8217;re not. It is wisdom to see reality and not illusion. I thank God who used the painful experience, even after so many years, to show me that all things here is temporary, so that I might look to something better. For something that is permanent, out of this world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-verse\">What has been will be again,\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0what has been done will be done again;\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0there is nothing new under the sun. ~Ecc 1:9 (NIV)<\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I heard a few times people quote the phrase &#8220;the only constant is Change&#8221;, and in those times, those words came into my deaf ear. It&#8217;s something as adult we all see and know, isn&#8217;t it? Just yesterday, I listened &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/potterdreams.com\/clay\/permanency\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,104,67,72],"tags":[340,201,247,323,328],"class_list":["post-1822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ecclesiastes","category-hope","category-thankful","category-wisdom","tag-covid-19","tag-hope","tag-pain","tag-walk-with-god","tag-wisdom"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1992,"url":"https:\/\/potterdreams.com\/clay\/death-idol-meaninglessness\/","url_meta":{"origin":1822,"position":0},"title":"Death &amp; Idol = Meaninglessness","author":"clay","date":"January 8, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"Year 2024 just began. And I see there are so many celebrations. There are many good reasons to celebrate, especially celebrate each others whom you love. However, there is something strange I notice. Among the reasons people celebrate, people celebrate their 'achievements' of being in certain places \/ being with\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;1 Corinthians&quot;","block_context":{"text":"1 Corinthians","link":"https:\/\/potterdreams.com\/clay\/category\/bible\/1-corinthians\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":773,"url":"https:\/\/potterdreams.com\/clay\/going-to-house-of-mourning\/","url_meta":{"origin":1822,"position":1},"title":"Going to House of Mourning","author":"clay","date":"May 21, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"It is better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting, for death is the destiny of every man;\u00a0\u00a0~(Ecc 7:2a)~ This afternoon, few colleagues asked me join to pay homage to late Dr Goh Keng Swee. I've thought abt it if given a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Ecclesiastes&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Ecclesiastes","link":"https:\/\/potterdreams.com\/clay\/category\/bible\/ecclesiastes\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":758,"url":"https:\/\/potterdreams.com\/clay\/death-at-the-door\/","url_meta":{"origin":1822,"position":2},"title":"Death at the Door","author":"clay","date":"April 22, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Recently, there has been many death news around me. Beginning with wife of founder my ex-company at the age of 84. Followed by a young guy in church, left behind a wife & 2 little children just last week. And most recent is our friend's father that passed away because\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Life&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Life","link":"https:\/\/potterdreams.com\/clay\/category\/life\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1934,"url":"https:\/\/potterdreams.com\/clay\/what-new-with-you\/","url_meta":{"origin":1822,"position":3},"title":"What new with you?","author":"clay","date":"March 21, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"I remember once with my girls we read about other's culture, and there's one African \/ Asian culture that instead asking,\"how are you?\", they would ask,\"what is new with you?\" My bad memory...:( Last week 2 people asked me these sort questions, and I don't think I gave them a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Calm&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Calm","link":"https:\/\/potterdreams.com\/clay\/category\/emotion\/calm\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":585,"url":"https:\/\/potterdreams.com\/clay\/wisdom-of-god-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":1822,"position":4},"title":"Wisdom of God (2)","author":"clay","date":"July 23, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"I read Tolkien's book Children of Hurin......and i was troubled. It's so dark....very different from his other works like the Hobbit & LOTR. But yesterday, i found out that he actually had a draft of his whole story....and interestingly in that final Battle, men was avenged justly. I don't know\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Assured&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Assured","link":"https:\/\/potterdreams.com\/clay\/category\/emotion\/assured\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2039,"url":"https:\/\/potterdreams.com\/clay\/no-strength-no-power-no-king-but-wise\/","url_meta":{"origin":1822,"position":5},"title":"No strength, no power, no king, but wise","author":"clay","date":"November 30, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"God often surprises me with something I never thought of. Many Christians have read their Bibles many times over. And surprisingly God has always something new everytime we open up our Bibles. And tonight is just one of those moments. I was reading from Proverbs 30, about the 4 animals\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Amazed&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Amazed","link":"https:\/\/potterdreams.com\/clay\/category\/emotion\/amazed\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/potterdreams.com\/clay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/potterdreams.com\/clay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/potterdreams.com\/clay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/potterdreams.com\/clay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/potterdreams.com\/clay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1822"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/potterdreams.com\/clay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1822\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1823,"href":"https:\/\/potterdreams.com\/clay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1822\/revisions\/1823"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/potterdreams.com\/clay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/potterdreams.com\/clay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/potterdreams.com\/clay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}