My mum helps out with a maid business, and frequently runs into some truly petty and / or nasty Singaporean employers. 

Yesterday an employer demanded that a maid, who had just been sacked, return some book to her.  And so my mum dutifully searched through the maid’s belongings, expecting to find the other surviving copy of the dead sea scrolls or some other really precious book.  As it turned out, all the (ex-)employer wanted back was a notebook valued at eighty cents, which the maid had used to record recipes while working for the (ex-)employer.

And so it came to pass, that at 30 years and 7 days of age, I fell ill - so sick from a bout of gastric flu that I had to curl up and clutch my stomach half the time to ease the pain - and had to excuse myself from work. 

I wonder if age has anything to do with how terrible I feel.  I suppose it isn’t that bad, since I am now forced to stop running for at least the next couple of days.

A Christian couple from my sister’s church appealed for help with their finances so that they can go on the trip to Israel with the rest of the church (see my previous post on a related matter).  An excerpt of their letter reads as follows :

"… However, the cost of the trip is a large sum to both of us ($3400/person).  This is a concern for us and it reserved us in signing up for the trip. 

We were challenged to pray about going for this trip and commit our finances to the Lord.  Romans 11 : 13 - 24 (NLT) says that we Gentiles (branches of the wild olive tree) were granted into the special olive tree of Abraham.  So we now share the blessing and nourishment God promised to Abraham and his children.

We realised that we are responsible to pray for Israel and the Jews.  But we do not have the passion, conviction and revelation to pray for them.  So we finally decided to go for the trip, so as to be exposed to the work in Israel and be a blessing to them …

Therefore I would like to humbly appeal to you for your sponsorship …"

Is the cure for a lack of passion spending a large sum of money on a "pilgrimage" to a distant land ?  Shouldn’t we try to fuel our passion first in Singapore ?  Maybe I’m being overly unkind or critical, but I simply don’t feel that the above appeal is right, or comfortable with how this "pilgrimage to Israel" thing in my sister’s church is playing out.

For the longest time, I’ve been eyeing the Canon digital SLR range of cameras.  Today, after smouldering in covetuousness for two years, we (or rather I) finally purchased the Canon 350D, which is the lowest end model of all the cameras in the Canon digital SLR range.  The excuse of course is to capture excellent pictures of Jed when he is born.

Ultrasound scan from Saturday’s visit to the gynaecologist.  No prizes for guessing what the image on the right is …

I started reading my second Dan Brown book, Angels & Demons (the first being The Da Vinci Code), a couple of days ago, and found myself liking his fiction less and less.  It’s not just his ideas and conspiracy theories(which I can’t say I agree with most of the time, but more on that in a later when I’ve completed the book).  It’s his writing style that I’m increasingly beginning to dislike - he comes across to me as somewhat crude, unsubtle, unpolished, maybe almost vulgar.  Brown has the habit of superimposing his thoughts on his characters and the text, such that you can almost hear what he thinks screaming out at you from the pages.  This leaves very little space for a reader to reach his own conclusions, independently.

Take this for example :

The Secret Vatican Archives are located at the far end of the Borgia Courtyard directly up a hill from the Gate of Santa Ana.  They contain over 20,000 volumes and are rumoured to hold such treasures as Leonardo da Vinci’s missing diaries and even unpublished books of the Holy Bible.

The italicised text seems superfluous to me; It is the author speaking - a weak attempt to use the novel as a conduit to bring across his conspiracy theory about the Vatican archives (not that his theory is necessarily wrong; I just find the style disagreeable).

Another example :

Vittoria paused, brushing a lock of hair from her eyes.  "Religion is like language or dress.  Wwe gravitate towards practices with which we were raised.  In the end, we are all proclaiming the same thing.  That life has meaning.  That we are grateful for the power that created us … Faith is universal.  Our specific methods for understanding it are arbitrary.  Some of us pray to Jesus, some of us to go Mecca, some of us study sub-atomic particles.  In the end we are all just searching for truth, that which is greater than ourselves."

The above philosophy is repeated throughout the novel, not only by this character Vittoria, but several others as well.  Brown might as well be saying those words himself !  His style is just too crude, and leaves too little space for readers to think for themselves …

During my teenaged years, I attended a conservative Brethren church where we often sang hymns, of which the Amazing Grace was one.

"Amazing grace, how sweet the sound
that saved a wretch like me
I once was lost, but now am found
was blind but now I see.

Twas grace that taught my heart to fear
and grace my fears relieved
How precious did that grace appear
the hour I first believed."

The one part about the hymn that I never figured out was the verse on grace and fear (italicised above).  We associate fear with negative or bad feelings, or irrational thoughts : Fear of the dark.  Fear of flying.  Fear of heights.  Fear of water.  Fear of teachers or bosses.

What has fear got to do with grace ?  Revelation dawned on my when I sang the hymn again during a wake memorial service last night.

A fear of the dark keeps us from walking through dark alleys in the middle of the night, and getting mugged or raped.
A fear of fire keeps us from playing recklessly with matches.
A fear of drowning keeps us from swimming in every pool or canal that we come across.
A fear of heights keeps us from recklessly climbing every pole or building that we see.
A fear of sexual disease keeps us from living prosmicuously.
A fear of the authorities keeps us from committing crimes.
A fear of losing a relationship spurs us not to take a friend or spouse for granted.
A fear of teachers and parents spurs us to study hard for our exams.
A fear of our bosses spurs us to do our work well, and keeps us from losing our jobs.
A fear of heart disease or cancer spurs us to live healthily.
A fear of attack and war spurs the Singapore Armed Forces to train harder to defend the country.

Fear is hardly a pleasant feeling.  But it keeps us from self-destructive behaviour and from hurting the people around us.  Were it not for fear, a lot more of us would be dead or maimed.  In this sense, fear is gracious.

The ultimate grace, as far as it takes the form of fear, is of course the fear of God.  A fear of what happens after death.  A fear of divine judgement for what we have done in our earthly lives.  It is this fear that I suspect the hymn-writer, John Newton, wrote about in that verse in Amazing Grace.

No one likes to think of the possibility of being judged and punished for what he has done wrong in his lifetime.  In fact, I could even say that it is very unfair of God to use such coercive measures (ie. punishment) to keep humanity in check - shouldn’t people be obeying God because they love or like Him ?

But it is also this fear of the possibility of being judged and punished for what one has done wrong in this lifetime that keeps us from defying God, and self-destructing in the process.  Unfortunately, we are sometimes like kids who need the fear of parental punishment to keep us from playing with fire and hurting ourselves.

So to the extent that fear operates to save us from ourselves - this is grace, a gift from God.

I understand Amazing Grace now.

Been training for IPPT for the past two weeks.  Woke up early for runs and all.  Logged into MIW to register for a test next week, and was informed :

"Unable to process IPPT booking.  You are currently in IPPT-ineligible Unit (eg. Unit Step Down, Deserter’s List, NS Holding List)".

All that training gone to waste.  And no money or loss of weight (I’m actually putting on weight) to show for it.  Crap.

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem.  May those who love you be secure.

Psalms 122 : 6

The older of my two younger sisters is thinking about going to Israel together with the rest of her church, on a sort of pilgrimage to the Holy Land I guess.  It is a trip that will set her back over $3,000.

My mother is upset because she thinks my sister could be more financially responsible.  My mother thinks that, given my sister’s tight finances, she shouldn’t be spending money on a trip to Israel.

I am upset, for a different reason.  I think my sister doesn’t have very sound reasons for going to Israel.  I would have no objections if my sister wanted to go on a holiday to Israel (and had the money to spare).  However, when asked, my sister said that the trip is important because they were going there to "pray for the people of Israel".  I told her that if she really wanted to pray for Israel, she could do it from Singapore.

I do not think I am wrong in this. 

I note that, recently, there is an increasing concern amongst a fair number of Singaporean Christians regarding the nation of Israel.  This is in no small part to the fact that a lot of end time Bible prophecy deals with Israel.  However, I question how much of this concern (like my sister’s) is based on a sound understanding on what is going on in the Middle East.

Israel is in the news so often.  Any Christian who really cares for the nation can easily find out about what is happening by watching or reading the news, or surfing the internet, or reading a book.  Sadly, I don’t think that many Christians (at least not those from my sister’s church), and certainly not my sister, bother to take this first step.  I don’t see how anyone can be genuinely concerned about Israel - and so genuinely concerned that you want to make a trip there to pray for Israel - if the first step of following the news on what happening there is not even done.  In my opinion, Christians should not be making trips to Israel based on other people telling them that it’s a good idea to go there to pray for the Israelis.

The other thing that really irks me is how some Christians are pro-Israel to the point that they are blind to the injustices committed by Israel.  It is not that I think Israel has never been wronged by the neighbouring nations.  It has and I believe that there are many times when it was justified in taking the harsh actions that it did in self-defence.  But I also believe that the situation in the Middle East is much more complex than Israel good, everyone else bad.  And the Bible clearly says that God values justice and mercy -

"He has showed, O man, what is good.  And what does the Lord require of you ?  To act justly and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God." (Micah 6 : 8)

In loving and showing support for God’s chosen people, Christians must be careful not to be abettors of anything that is unjust.

(Note : Don’t mistake what I’ve written here as being anti-Israel.  While in Boston earlier this year, I stood at the Holocust memorial and wept.  I believe that the Jews are God’s chosen people and therefore occupy a special position in God’s heart, and that a lot of end time Bible prophecy revolves around Israel and its continued existence and prosperity.  For this reason, Christians should rightly be concerned about Israel.  Neglecting the Jews, on the one hand, and blindly supporting any Israeli cause even if unjust, on the other, are both extremes that Christians should take care to avoid.)

A friend shared recently about a difficult time that she had been going through.  The news came as quite a shock as she had always appeared happy to me (alternative interpretation of events : I was, as I usually am, too dense to notice that she was upset).  And so there was an awkward silence after she first broke the news, before I apologised if I had been insensitive at any time to what she was going through.

Though this friend was not someone I knew very well, what she said troubled me enough to make me stay awake for longer than usual after bedtime that night.  I wanted so much to say something comforting, that things will get better, that time heals, etc. but the harsh reality is that words can be so empty in the face of problems that are insoluble.

How would Jesus deal with a situation like this ?  What would Jesus say when confronted with a problem that cannot be rectified (with anything but a major miracle) ?  Short of resurrecting that which is dead, how would Jesus console a soul in anguish because of death ?  I opened the Bible to John 11 : 32 - 35

When Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw Him, she fell at His feet and said, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died".

When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, He was deeply moved in spirit and troubled … [ and ] Jesus wept.

Jesus would not talk.  Jesus would not perform miracles.  Jesus would weep, first.  He would grieve with the one who grieves.  He would weep with the one whom He loves.  In our fallen, imperfect world where not every wrong or hurt can be immediately corrected or healed by a miracle, Jesus says "I share your pain.  I love you.  I will walk this difficult journey with you."