Thoughts a Month Down

Keeping this blog alive - wringing a wet cloth dipped into a spring at least a mile away, bringing drips of water upon the parched earth.

At this point, I can articulate that I'm thankful for the job that God has given , the amazing learnings at the job and the time my colleagues have afforded me. He has indeed given the desire of my heart to keep learning new things and my cup runneth over! And I find that my thirst for knowledge is still not deep enough, likewise my thirst for God.

It's amazing how fickle the human heart is. My heart and mind was borne down by the pressure, mostly self inflicted, of wanting to understand and absorb as much as the job would offer. In turn, I found myself with less and less time for God and turning to mindless means of unwinding than the close study of His word.

But I am still awed by His grace and patience with me... and for all that He has done. If only the weak human heart could love Him more and be more fully turned to Him.

My Very Amazing Christmas

On the 23rd Dec, after my last day at D.light, I was looking forward to flying home on 26th Dec. But before that, I knew that there was a special Christmas in store this year - my husband and I had made the decision that I would serve in Hong Kong and he back at our church in Singapore for this Christmas - and God always honours such offerings of love to His name. And every sentence you will read here tells of God's grace:

During those last few days in Hong Kong, a Christian brother had granted me free reign of his apartment while he was overseas. I had spent my 24th Dec helping with preparations for the Christmas Lunch at the Vine church - within those 24 hours, I witnessed how God quickly provided the 62 presents we were short of. Also, God kept bringing in amazing people to help with the preparations.

I managed to wake up early on Christmas and had my breakfast at my favorite Tsui Wah before heading to the Vine. It was 9am and time to prepare for the Christmas Lunch. As scheduled, the volunteers for logistics headed out to pick up the pre-ordered ice at the nearby supermarket only to find out that they had sold it to someone else. However, by God's grace, they found the ice at a neighbouring 7-11. That morning, several new volunteers turned up - their spirit of giving and service was so evident that I just asked them to stay and mingle with our lunch guests.

As the first Christmas Service at the Vine began, we quickly found out that we had overlooked rostering teams to serve for the service! Impromptu sound crew and offertory teams were created by the regulars who just responded to the need. When it rapidly became clear we didn't have enough chairs, one of the regulars described to me where more chairs were upstairs, but I didn't really have a clear idea. It was truly the leading of God that led me straight to the cupboard where the chairs were. The logistics volunteers for the lunch jumped right in and began serving as the logistics team for the Christmas service as well.

The team for the lunch was scheduled to meet at 1045 to pray and go over the event schedule, but the service over-ran by some 20 minutes. While I was having the jitters to run an event without a briefing, we were carried forth by God's blessing that the whole event ran smoothly. There were occassions when we couldn't locate some items and people, but it all came through just in time. The saying goes that the devil's in the details, but I'm glad that so is God.

During the event, I was extremely blessed to be prayed over by our guests - most were asylum seekers, but they also included our church volunteers as well as people who didn't have anywhere to spend Christmas. When the event ended at 1530, it was also truly inspirational cleaning up the Vine with the volunteers. They weren't in a hurry to move off anywhere and just wanted to fully clean up this second home that was dear to everybody.

After cleaning up, I had some 4 hours before my supper appt with a friend flying in from India, and thought of heading home to grab the much needed forty-winks. An old friend then opened his house in town for me to rest, saving me from the long journey. I was also emotionally and mentally drained from completing my tenure in China as well as the Christmas lunch, and the Lord used those 45 minutes while I rested to restore my strength. Angels had surely ministered to me as I lay there - I found myself unable to really sleep but my entire self experienced a strange buzz and a sense of release as I laid there in His presence. Just as amazingly, my friend's mum invited me to stay for dinner. Thus I was able to have my first meal with a family, in more than 3 months, on Christmas day. And all these began from the point when God brought my friend from HK to Singapore some 8 years ago, when I met him at Living Waters Methodist Church.

For some strange reason, I was not able to meet up with my friend that Christmas night. While waiting around the area for her to call, I had the thought that it might be nice if I could bump into a volunteer from the Vine this morning. Taking in the populous nature of Hong Kong, I quickly brushed aside this thought. But I did not have to wait long - a volunteer called me on my handphone to check that I was alright - he had known that I might be alone and would be flying home the following day.

As I reflected on my blessings at Christmas that night, the phrase floated in my heart:
"Alone, and yet, not alone". For within God's kingdom and in the family of God, we will never be alone.

God's Timing is Perfect

How wonderful it is that the Lord should have prepared my work before I had even set foot in Hong Kong. His timing is perfect. While in India, He stirred up my heart to see social injustice and He has led me to a church strong in a vision to address social injustice in Hong Kong. He has given me the privilege of joining my brothers and sisters in Hong Kong in ministering to those poor in Spirit, and provided me with an avenue to serve in a month-long project for Christmas. He has brought alongside many brothers and sisters in this undertaking and has shown me that we are one in Christ. The Holy Spirit itself has brought us close together in this undertaking. Now, help us lay the whole project at the feet of Christ. The project ends exactly on Christmas and I fly home on 26th Dec. God's timing is perfect.

Women Christian Conferences

I just attended a Women's Christian Conference in Hong Kong at the Vine, called Soul Sister's Unite. Having spent the formative part of my Christian growth in an intergenerational church, I've never given much thought to fellowship amongst women, much less uniting as women in a church - because I've been fortunate enough to have older women in the church that I could speak with.

Being a woman who grew up in a comfortable city, studying in an all-girls school for 10 years, and having a type-A personality, I had never suffered any form of gender discrimination. Although I had an angsty teenagehood, I never questioned what being a woman meant. In many other countries, women are not as fortunate - having lower or no social status of their own, experiencing discrimination at the workplace, or facing social injustice as a single mother...

I was never a feminine woman, and I don't regret that. (Sorry Dad) To me, being a woman had never been more than existing as I am, a simple sense of just being who I am. Only when I was getting married did I feel a need of having some image of being a bride and wearing clothes appropriate for a celebration in God's eyes. But I had never associated my womanhood with shopping, the ability to multitask, enjoying the little pleasures in life - for me, those things just existed. If I enjoyed them, it was just because I am made this way and not because I am a woman.

Some of you might recognise these as signs of denial. This may be true. There is a commonality amongst women that I cannot deny - which also includes the love of shopping, multitasking etc... those things that previously I have identified with my personhood, but not womanhood. But I sometimes also feel divorced from their commonality - such as being feminine, loving heels/make-up/handbags, or sometimes being emotional.

At the conference, a speaker said that we women define ourselves by our relationships - roles that we play. I don't agree with that fully, but I certainly discovered that I often valued myself through how valuable I am to the company or to my bosses. And that was just a plain wrong way to work on relationships - it's a barrier that does not fully let you love the other person freely with no strings attached. This is a big problem if the field we are called to is the workplace. It's about being Martha or the older prodigal son - needing to do things to gain approval, instead of choosing to live in the full security and freedom of being a daughter of God.

For many women living an urban lifestyle, we put achieving things first and relationships on par, a second, or even a third priority. That focus on achievement in a meritocratic society has led us to identify ourselves with the acknowledgment we gain - in this process of moving "upwards" in civilisation, we loose our womanhood. Who needs womanhood when what we want is a progressive career? By then, we view many other women as competitors and lose a critical advantage and gift that God has meant for us to possess.

That advantage is the fellowship of women - because we are made different from men, and experience different life trials and needs that only sisters would understand. I have been so blinkered by this urban lifestyle that I have denied a commonality of womanhood and attribute it to individualism. Because we do not face the trials of womanhood so early on nowadays - such as marriage and being a mother - we do not discover the fellowship of sisters till later in life.

By contrast, a woman growing up in a village would have a keen sense of her womanhood much earlier on - because it is characterised but what she is not able to do, and what she is expected to do. Some of it, such as the non-status of a widow, is certainly social injustice that infringes human rights. But others, such as the role of wives in a village, is not suppressive in itself - it is however, injustice, when it comes at the cost of discrimination in education opportunities or even infant genocide.

So while that doesn't mean that I will now be uber-active in my home church's women's ministry, it does mean that if my church is organising a women's conference to set women free as daughters of God, and to unite the women of God - I'll be there to help out - because I've really benefitted so much from the past two women conferences I've attended.

The Harvest is Plentiful

The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.
Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest
to send out laborers into his harvest.
Luke 10:2

What did our Lord Jesus mean when he used this allegory of the harvest being plentiful, and the laborers few? Our Lord spoke to an audience that mainly consisted of farmers who knew all about harvesting, and it would have resounded deeply in them:

Here’s a farmer’s typical day: He wakes up at 4 or 4.30am, milks his buffalos and then sets off to the field. He stays in the field for the whole day, only coming back for lunch and dinner. He then sleeps at 8 or 9pm, and he wakes up again at 11pm to turn on the water for the field. During harvest time, this cycle changes drastically.

Recently, I spent a day in an Indian village in Bulandsharhr to understand more about our customers’ needs, and to gather more customer stories for our company. One person that we interviewed was a farmer, who explained that it is now time for rice harvest. They harvest the rice from 10pm to 5am, and I can only assume that their sleep cycle is totally reversed, or they sleep less.

So firstly, there is sacrifice involved in harvesting – because the farmers understand it as their topmost priority. They need to harvest when the crop is at its best. Similarly, Jesus is saying that the crop is ripe, right now. There is a crop for each generation and ours is ripe for the harvest. And I can bear witness that the harvest is plentiful just by looking at two countries I have been travelling to – there are 1.1 billion people in India and 1.3 billion in China. However, only 2% are Christians in India and 6% in China. The harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few.

While at the village in the evening, I wanted to take some photographs and the villagers were keen to have me take photos of them harvesting the rice. So off I went with my colleague/translator and some 50 men, and I couldn’t help but laugh at what happened next. Half of them rushed for the stalks that have been cut and began beating the grains out of the stalk. It was instinctive; it was communal; and there was joy on their faces.

There is much to learn from the villagers about harvesting. The harvest of souls is meant to be the natural "job-fit" for a Christian, but it’s certainly not the easiest. We have to find time for fellowship and build relationships with the like-minded, so that when it is time for harvest, we can support each other and work together. We will face spiritual battles and discouragement. But there will be both joy and suffering in harvest.

Secondly, focus on the mission. That evening in the village, the villagers wanted to show me how they actually harvest the rice. Once the men had squatted with sickle in hand, they seemed to be driven by an irrepressible urge to keep cutting the rice. I had to tell them to stay still so that I could take photos, but you could tell that every inch of their being wanted to continue cutting the rice. There is a certain single-mindedness about farmers and harvest. It is what they have waited and toiled for months for, and the source of their livelihood. When harvest comes, they assume a posture of harvesting.

Are we as single-minded in responding to God’s call to harvest souls or are we often distracted? Do we condition our bodies and minds in a posture of harvesting by soaking up God’s word daily, keeping His commandments daily and listening to see how we can respond to His call daily? And the personal challenge for me – have I shared often enough that I may communicate the Gospel even more clearly and maintain an unflinching desire for God’s heart? Again I am reminded that we cannot let ourselves be distracted by lesser things. Together as a family of God, we need to get into the “stuff” that makes us a family – prayer, God’s word, outreach, worship, and in increasing and deeper measures – seeking for the places where deep calls to deep.

And thirdly, our Lord adds an important spiritual dimension to harvest in Luke 10 – he bids us to PRAY. Not only to pray, but to pray earnestly for the Lord to send out laborers into His harvest. If we are not going out into the Lord’s harvest day in day out, we need to pray for the Lord to call and send laborers. The early disciples too fasted and prayed as an integral part of their various ministries and church life.

Singapore has been incredibly blessed. A recent report on cities by the United Nations (24 Oct) lauded Singapore as the only city without slums out of 245 cities surveyed. Our crime rate is incredibly low and the Government is free of corruption. What does this mean to us when we look at the harvest as God’s church in Singapore? We are those we have been given much, and much will be expected. The monthly income of an Indian farmer ranges from 2,000 – 8,000 rs (that’s S$60 - $240 per month). That means the lowest pay that we pay our domestic helpers in Singapore is the highest pay for a farmer supporting his family in India. When the Day comes, there will be a reckoning for us if we have responded to the call to release the oppressed, to free the prisoners, and show kindness to the orphaned and widowed. With Singapore being so small and the blessings we have received, the majority of our harvest as a church in Singapore would naturally be outside of Singapore. He calls us to be a church that upholds justice, mercy and faithfulness beyond our borders.

What can one person do? With God, all things are possible (Mark 10:27) and all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose (Ro 8:28). Archie Coates’ message for Holy Trinity Brompton Church connected the message of harvest to my experience in the village, and he further brought up the example of Henry Martyn, a missionary in the 18th Century. He graduated at the top of his class in Cambridge and received the prize for Classics. He chose to abandon a secure academic career and became a missionary to India. Ill health befall him shortly after, and he never really recovered. Henry died at the young age of 31. However, during the short 7 years he was in India, he translated the whole of the New Testament into Urdu, Persian and Judaeo-Persic. Only one person came to Christ through Henry during these 7 years, but his work has laid the foundation for the missionaries that came after him. We may not all be called to be missionaries, but we are all called to be harvesters in the field, with whichever gifts that God has blessed us with.

Henry Martyn's love for God and for justice, mercy and faithfulness saw him through his ministry. In his journal entry on 6 October 1812, it read, “Oh! when shall time give place to eternity? When shall appear that new heaven and new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness? There, there shall in no wise enter in any thing that defileth: none of that wickedness which has made men worse than wild beasts, none of those corruptions which add still more to the miseries of mortality, shall he seen or heard of any more.”

Pictures of Poverty

These images are taken from outside the church I attended on Sunday in the EMBASSY sector of Delhi. There are slums even at the heart of its diplomatic quarters. While my mind reacts at the irony of it all, which includes the poster hanging across the slum on "voices against poverty" - I felt powerless to do anything. It would be useless for me to give them any money - a full education programme, schooling incentives, public housing+resettlement programme, employment and infrastructure building would be needed...

Preliminary thoughts to Living Waters Methodist Church

One prevalent area that I had the privilege of witnessing is really the poverty, social and economic stratification in India. Likewise, social issues, such as the homeless, ethnic enclaves (maids working in Hong Kong) and refugees are obvious in Hong Kong. Now, the social issues in Singapore are often underplayed in the news... sometimes to avoid racial tension, at other times it is because the Government takes care of it. Afterall, any homeless persons reported in Singapore would be escorted off to a home in no time. How do we, as Christ's body in Singapore, make God's gospel relevant to the society? Do we not go into certain areas because the Government is already taking care of it? Who are the orphans and the widows whom our Lord's heart bleeds for? What is our responsibility as one of the wealthiest nation in the world to the rest of the world? If we're not actively reaching out to people in poorer nations, does that mean that we don't hear the cry of the needy and the Lord will hold us accountable on the day of judgement? In an increasingly connected world, where Singaporeans can afford to fly, it's not enough to say that we have kind of ministered to our local congregation and that the poor in Thailand or India is too far away.

Secondly, being out here away from home makes me more keenly aware that we have only this life. With the grace of God, we will be able to accomplish all that He has set aside for us. BUT, we need that sense of thirst, of active seeking after God. Everyday, we are bombarded by the work, many other things and distractions jostling for our attention. And we suffer from the sometime guilty realisation that we need to spend more time with our loved ones. And then there is ministry and quiet time with God is somehow squeezed in. Without the wisdom of the Lord, it is not possible to live this life to the full. Without seeking first the Lord, who changes and renews our minds and hearts, it is not possible to live that "balanced" life, which is a life marked by an inner peace. We have not prayed enough. We are not desperate enough to hear from God. We do not love Him enough.

If we want to see the Lord move in our church, let's commit to meet together and pray, to seek first our Lord. Be encouraged by the Lord - that is to meet him, have our hearts changed to align with our Lord's will, that we may be en-boldened, en-couraged for the Lord. Can our lukewarm little hamlet change? Sure, we are faithful in service in many matters, but I long to see our church as a church that moves by the power and might of God - the day that our church may be able to reflect more fully the great God we worship...

Anyone from Living Waters feeling the same pls email me.