I’ve been meaning to pen down my thoughts on the Prodigal Son for some time already, but just haven’t found the time.  Pending the time that I do, here’s a meaningful song by John Waller based on the parable.

The global economic crisis has claimed another high profile victim, this time in the form of a distraught Madoff investor who committed suicide after losing $1.4 billion of client money.

This is sad news.  Christmas should be about hope, not suicide.

It just struck me a few days ago that in these uncertain times, Christians have been given the greatest assurance ever.  This is the Person of Jesus Christ, whose other name is Immanuel or "God with us".

In Romans 8 : 31, 38 - 39, Paul wrote about God’s reassuring presence (in the context of persecution not financial trouble, but I believe the principles apply to our present day), as follows :

31 … If God is for us, who can be against us ? … 38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

I read with amusement that Mahathir the former PM of our neighbour is at it again, this time trying to get the construction of his aborted pet project — a new causeway bridge — restarted.  On 17 December he blogged (http://test.chedet.com/che_det/) :

1. The Star reports on the traffic congestion at the new Sultan Iskandar Customs, Immigration and Quarantine Complex in Johore Bahru. Most of the congestion was caused by traffic from Singapore entering Malaysia.

2. At the risk of boring visitors to my blog, may I point out that the idea of a bridge to replace the causeway, connected to the CIQ building by an elevated highway was in order to avoid the traffic congestion. Replacing the elevated highway with a road at ground level must cause a clash between traffic to end from Singapore and the Johore Bahru east / west traffic.

3. The problem can only get worse as more and more cars will take to the road in future.

4. But we must endure these jams because we must not annoy our neighbour.

His persistence is commendable and his jab at Singapore ("we must not annoy our neighbour") as usual funny.  I guess he must really be irritated with the congestion whenever he drives back into Malaysia from Singapore, hence his heartfelt concern that Singaporeans are being held up at the causeway. 

The outpouring of ayes by Mahathir’s fans (posted as comments on the blog) is also touching.  Except that no one seems to have noticed that the congestion seems to have been caused at least partly if not entirely by the incompetence of those responsible for the project.

In this connection, the Star (a Malaysian paper which Mahathir mentioned in his blog) reported

"The first day of operations at the new Sultan Iskandar Customs, Immigration and Quarantine complex was marred by massive traffic congestion.  The two-hour-long crawl saw traffic into Johor snaking all the way to Woodlands in Singapore during peak hours due to motorists being caught off guard by the cashless toll collection system at the complex. … Singaporean businessman John Tan, 45, said he only found out about the cards when he entered Johor via the new complex. … Fellow Singaporean Tommy Ong, 40, said the authorities should have made the public more aware that Touch ‘n Go cards had to be used."

Well, maybe Singaporeans are stupid because they failed to read the notices about the cashless toll collection system — I suppose like how we sometimes fail to read exam instructions properly before attempting the questions.  But what about this article from the Straits Times ?

MALAYSIAN police were called in on Thursday to keep crowds in check at the new Johor checkpoint as chaos reigned.  Thousands of Malaysian bus commuters pushed, shoved and beat on bus doors, trying to get a seat on a bus travelling to Singapore.

…

At the former Johor terminal, Singapore-bound commuters just walked through a single-storey facility to get to their buses.

The towering Sultan Iskandar complex however, has commuters climbing to the third storey for immigration clearance, a trip which takes about 10 minutes.

Immigration clearance takes less than a minute, but commuters hit a bottleneck when they get to the bus depot as there are not enough buses to move the number of commuters.

The option of walking across the Causeway, which was possible at the old terminal, has gone so more people rely on buses to cross over to Singapore.

…

According to Malaysian news agency Bernama, Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Minister Datuk Shahrir Abdul Samad attributed the congestion to the haphazard entry and exit points at the complex. ‘I feel the impact of its opening should have been envisaged and better preparations made to deal with the possibilities,’ he said.

‘If we don’t plan carefully and think that a walk-through or simulation is enough, problems may crop up and that’s what has happened at the CIQ complex.’

Poor design, lack of planning and lack of preparations, and not the lack of a new bridge, appears to be the real cause of the congestion.  If the management of the bridge project is no more competent (assuming one is built) than the CIQ complex, why should anyone expect a better result than what we have presently ?

Of all the Christmases in my short existence, the one this year feels the saddest.  Never has the world appeared more hopeless, and never have I felt more helpless to do anything to improve it.  The global economy, teethering on collapse, threatens to drive the many poor below the poverty line and into starvation, the excesses of overconsumption have sent the global climate reeling, terrorism scored a massive victory in Mumbai (taking the life of numerous innocents including one Singaporean), Hong Kong and Indonesia struggle with the bird flu, and more and more people appear to be rejecting or abandoning the church.

It seems sometimes, that we are regressing into a world without God, where there is no reason or hope to life other than our chemical composition.  Not that God doesn’t care about our world, but that the world no longer cares for God, squeezing out the sacred and spiritual out of its secular existence as much as possible.

Times like these, I pray that God will send a new revelation. Not ‘new’ in the sense of a new gospel (for there are none apart from those already revealed in the Bible), or a clever repackaging of the Christian message using the latest gimmicks.

But "new" like the fresh dawn air on the mountaintop.  While air is not new to us because we breathe every minute of our lives, there is a refreshing and revitalising quality about crisp dawn air that is instantly distinguishable from stale city air. 

"New" like the breaking of light at dawn after a long and dark night, as the life and ministry of Jesus is described in Isaiah 9 : 2 -

The people living in darkness have seen a great light;
On those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned. 

We need a new revelation.  So that we may have hope.

The church needs a new revelation.  So that it’s testimony and ministry may stand apart from stale alternatives.

The world needs a new revelation.  So that it may be saved from itself.

We think Josh looks absolutely adorable when he smiles.  Unfortunately, he has been screaming a lot lately, unless you carry him and amuse him.  Smiles are increasingly infrequent. 

We think this might be because he isn’t completely mobile — he can only crawl, can’t walk yet — and has to scream to get attention so that someone would bring him where he wants.  And of course, he screams because this is about the only way he can express himself; he can’t talk.  Yet.

We hope that all this will end when he starts to walk and talk.  Until then, we have to put up with his apparent grumpiness.

Just before I travelled to New Delhi for work in September this year, New Delhi was bombed by terrorists and the trip was nearly cancelled.  This time, just three days before I was to travel to India for another work assignment, Mumbai was attacked by terrorists.  This time the trip was called off.

The e-mail (a BBC Internet article link) which I received from my colleague on my Blackberry while at Changi airport on Thursday, waiting to board a flight for another business trip — my life is really beginning to look like the Amazing Race — looked relatively innocuous.  As I had time to spare, I checked the online BBC news report at one of the airport’s free internet terminals.  The photo of the burning hotel is one which will remain in my memory for some time.

And then on Friday night, sad news of the death of the Singaporean hostage.

Some newspapers / blogs have reported that this Mumbai attack is India’s equivalent of 9/11.  Although many more people died in the World Trade Centre attack, I think the terrorists who had carried out the Mumbai attack had in some ways to be motivated by a greater evil.  To have killed all those innocent persons in Mumbai, the terrorists would have to repeatedly, deliberately, and remorselessly fire at them. 

In contrast, the terrorists who flew the planes once into the targeted buildings on 9/11 only did so once (for obvious reasons they could not do it multiple times).  Perhaps they would not have done it again if could live through the horror of the attack ?

Whatever the case may be, it is quite clear that the Mumbai victims were murdered one after another in cold blood.