Contemplating, Considering....

I am thinking about going on a Holy Land Tour. It is a trip I have been wanting to take for a long time. My friend, Dot, and I almost went last year but the trip got postponed because the organisers had left booking the air tickets too late. Now another opportunity has opened up with a group from the Singapore Bible College. Should I go?

My heart says, yes. My head says, you have got to be kidding me.

My sister Su said, go. Because she postponed a trip to Trinidad and missed the chance to see her good friend before she died. My bank account protests and pleads with me to be a responsible mum. My best friend says, go - you promised me that for one year you will not sit out and that you will dance. My body says, 14 days of touring? are you up to it? The voice of Ms Not-good-enough says, you aren't in a good enough place with God to walk where He walked. But the voice of Ms Child-of-God says, what utter rubbish, when did Jesus ever say that?

In London

I thought last year had been a year of much travelling but this year has turned out to be just as mad. This month especially, I have felt quite disoriented because I literally moved my clothes out of one suitcase into another. I was in Depok, Indonesia for a conference til Fri 9 Jul, then moved into an overnight bag for my weekend in Bintan with the girls on 10 Jul, and then into a bigger suitcase for my trip to London on 15 Jul.

I feel out of touch with what is going on at office and am quite ready right now for the routine and normalcy of the work week. Makes me wonder - would I chafe if I were to retire? I keep talking fondly of looking forward to retirement, but sometimes, I am not so sure I would enjoy days of nothing but leisure. And there is quite a bit of truth, I have discovered, in Paul's words in 1 Tim 5:13 - talking of the idle women in church he said "And besides they learn to be idle, wandering about from house to house, and not only idle but also gossips and busybodies, saying things which they ought not" . Hahahaha. This I must not become :)

So what have I been up to in London? There was the baptism of my newest grand-niece, Marisha...



Catching up with family...



Great Quiet Times at Maya's dining table with this lovely reminder of God's creation...



Many cups of cappucino (skinny!), many many slices of Maya's chocolate cake.... Watched a movie (Inception) that messed with my mind in an exciting way... Watched a play (War Horse) that was a technical wizardry where the life sized horse puppets outshone the human actors hands down... .

And celebrated my niece Vidhya's first wedding anniversary at a fantastic Italian restaurant... To think it has been a year already since I last was here for my sister Su's 60th birthday and Vidhya's wedding!



So here I am, going to pack in a bit, getting ready to go home. I pray I will have as enjoyable a flight back as I did coming here. I pray I don't get another kiss-y couple in the seats next to me! Pray all the babies will sleep. Oh yeah - pray for journey mercies :)

On Christ the Solid Rock I Stand

Conference in Jakarta

So here I am blogging from a university town called Depok, about an hour's drive from Jakarta. The traffic chaos I had experienced on my last trip into this city is still fresh on my mind, and of course, nothing has changed.

I am here on an official trip this time, attending a conference with other delegates from South East Asian countries. There are 4 of us in the Singapore delegation. Mostly we feel like frauds because we don't have even a fraction of the problems that the other countries face. The focus of this seminar is on how marginalised minorities in some SEAsian countries can be helped to access mainstream education. These marginalised minorities usually speak a different language from that used in the schools and therefore the children who do not speak the mainstream language find it difficult to cope in school and drop out early. This leads to succeeding generations being trapped in the same economic state and unable to progress because their mother tongue isn't the language of education.

Anyway, I must say that, thankfully, the colleagues I am travelling with are a crazy bunch, so we have kept each other in stitches. We raced off to shop and eat the first day we got here before the conference started and booked our massages ;)



The conference started yesterday and I must say we were taken aback by the way the room was set up. I felt like I was a UN delegate, what with the Singapore flag on my table and all.



That look on my face is nervousness - in case we were asked to share our country's experiences with Multi Lingual education ;)

Here we are with the delegation from Malaysia...



And flying our national colours... We almost ended up posing with the Indonesian flag though because they are so similar!

Fruit of the Spirit

I felt challenged today to examine the presence of fruit of the Spirit in my life.

Paul says in Galatians 5: 22 – 23 that “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.”

God knows I struggle with all of them! It is easy to let my eye pass over the words, and agree, yes, they all are admirable traits. But wait, I say to myself. If God is within me, then I should be exhibiting these characteristics. They would be the “fruit” – the result of the Spirit’s work within me. And like a tree bears fruit – naturally, effortlessly, abundantly – my life should exhibit these characteristics as well.

Yet I know, if I am honest with myself, that I have struggled (and continue to struggle) with each of these characteristics at different times. How to love, when I am not loved back? How to rejoice when there is overwhelming sorrow? How do I keep peace when I want to retort with anger and bitterness? I have little success I think with the rest as well. To wait when there is little hope or sign of change? To be kind when the instinct is to be distant? To be good? O Lord, who other than you is good? My fickleness in abandoning God when I give way to temptation… Gentleness? I hear my students laugh. And above all – self control? Sigh…. Not even close.

But I take comfort in knowing I am but a ‘Work in Progress’. That in God's eyes I am being made perfect, one day at a time, one trial at a time. I am not yet all that I was created to be. One day, I will be.