The Promise

The past week marked several "last times". My second son had some time off from school because it was PSLE marking week. I took a day off because it was my birthday and so on that day my son got to send his sister to kindergarten, the same one he attended several years back. This was the last time for him because she joins him in primary school next year. He looked around to see what has changed since last year. He still has an attachment to the school. We went to Dempsey for a nice birthday breakfast after that. He had a mixed berries brioche whilst I had an organic kaya sourdough toast. I couldn't help thinking about how quickly he has grown up.

We got home in time to see my eldest son off to his first day of A Levels exams. 15 years after he started kindergarten, he is enduring his last major school exams. The Singapore education system isn't the most easy-going. It can often leave the student and parents feeling like there isn't any relief to this big ugly storm. There were times when we were too focused on the raging winds to notice that God is in control. I am counting on God as there is little I can do to help my son prepare for his A Levels. I am very thankful that he has gotten this far, the sense of belonging he feels toward the schools he attended, and the friends that he has made.

Yesterday we attended my daughter's graduation-cum-concert. The final kindergarten concert for us until the next generation of kids come along. The Promise was the continuation from last year's concert The Journey, where the Planet Alpha kids had traveled to Planet Omega to rescue the Omega kids from utter destruction. In this sequel, the kids managed to escape Planet Omega but had to fight a huge fire, which I think occurred on board their spaceship. Fortunately, a team of galactic fire-fighters, including my daughter, managed to subdue the inferno with their dance.

But far more dangerous than the fire was Planet Delta. At least a fire looks like a fire. This planet was an illusion of happiness that ensnares anyone who makes a stopover. Even the audience was clapping along when they aired the Planet's anthem. Captain Kirk would not have stood a chance against the lure of Pharrell Williams' Happy. Fortunately, the kids remembered the purpose of their mission and made their flight to freedom.

My kids are moving on to the next stage of their lives. It is difficult to describe the feeling. It feels like I blinked and missed something. It feels like I turned around to get something for them and see them in a distance when I turn back. Time just ticks along, and if you miss it, you miss it. No replays. I just thank God that we did not "miss" having these kids. By the grace of God, our firstborn was safe despite my wife's spotting in the early stages of pregnancy. By the grace of God, we kept believing after 2 miscarriages and 9 years of waiting. By the grace of God, we got to experience being parents to a wonderful girl. 

I have been humming "Lord, I'm Amazed by You" the past week. Perhaps that aptly describes what I feel - utterly amazed. I pray that my kids will remember God's amazing promise when they face up to life's challenges, trusting their faith not their sight. 


You paint the morning sky with miracles in mind
My hope will always stand
For You hold me in Your hand

Lord I'm amazed by You
Lord I'm amazed by You
Lord I'm amazed by You
And how You love me

~ Bethel Music

The Universal Truth

This morning, I read about how the University of Cambridge's Online Access site crashed because there were far too many enthusiasts trying to view or download Stephen Hawking's 1966 doctoral thesis "Properties of Expanding Universes". I went to the site to have a look, literally one glance - saw a mathematical formula and decided that it would be too much for me to handle. This is the realm of theoretical physicists, not a finance major. And it really exasperates me to start reading something and not finish it.

I didn't even know that the word "universe" comes in the plural form. I am thankful that universes, and particularly the one that we are living in, do not count on me understanding their properties in order for them to work. It would be a big mental burden if the entire universe depended on me. I do sometimes go about thinking that everything is a matter of life and death - that we must conclude on that particular issue today, that we need to get that thing close to perfection, we need to figure out a solution right this minute. Someone whom I regard as a mentor reminded me a couple of months back that unless people's lives are at stake, don't lose sleep over it. A good piece of advice and something that I need to gain mastery of before I take on the matters regarding the universe.

In the past, I have attempted to read some of the articles that simplifies the theories and concepts in the field of cosmology. Even those have proven I don't have a scientific bone in me. But it leaves me in awe to think that there are people who are capable of figuring out such complex matters just sitting at their desk. It is no wonder that in Genesis 11:6, it is recorded for us that God said, "nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them."  Yet what mankind knows about the universe today is merely the tip of the iceberg, or more aptly, a minute blob in the universe. Everything we learn something new, we learn that there are far more things that we do not know. It is like a Russian Doll that works in reverse - you open a doll and realize that there is a bigger doll.

The Bible isn't a cosmologist's Guide to the Universe and Everything in it. If it were, it would fail the likes of me. The Bible is like the cheatsheet on everything you need to know to make sense of life. So rather than telling you every single detail of how the universe was put in place, it tells you who did it. Rather than satisfying the curiosities of scientists, the Bible seeks to satisfy the longing of every human heart - that everyone is immeasurably precious in the sight of God. 

What we know today tells us that we know so little about the universe. God is not concerned that we know so little about it. What matters to Him is that you understand you mean the universe to Him.


4 What is mankind that you are mindful of them,
    human beings that you care for them?
5 You have made them[d] a little lower than the angels
    and crowned them[f] with glory and honor.
6 You made them rulers over the works of your hands;
    you put everything under their[g] feet:
7 all flocks and herds,
    and the animals of the wild,
8 the birds in the sky,
    and the fish in the sea,
    all that swim the paths of the seas.

~ Psalm 8: 4 - 8 (NIV)

God's Grace

I came across a Ted-ed video entitled "Why is it so Hard to Cure Cancer?" today. Actually I saw facebook post a couple of days back but decided to give it a miss because there didn't seem to be any upside knowing the answer to the question. Beside I felt like I knew what it was going to say. When I saw the post again this morning, I decide to click on it because the cartoon style graphics was rather interesting - the cancer cells were depicted as sinister looking black squids.

And indeed, the video was informative. If it were on some other topic, I would have even called it entertaining. It talked about how cancer cells can replicate into different types of sub-clones. By its very nature cancer cells are mutants, so I guess they are in the business of mutating. Treatment targeted at one sub-clone may be completely ineffective in combating another sub-clone. It talked about cancer cells communicating and inducing healthy cells, and suppressing the immune system. There are cancer stem cells that are stubborn against medical treatment, and all it takes is a single remaining cancer stem cell to trigger a relapse. The video also explained how cancer cells have their own defence system against the treatments administered.

The nature of cancer has such strong parallels to the nature of sin. We are all born fallen, and our fallenness gets the better of us. It becomes our second nature such that we don't necessary see the right from wrong. If we do see it, we hide from it or change our point of view to fit the situation. What starts out as a little experiment can end up permanently damaging us and the people around us. It spreads and morphs, unless something radical is done about it.

The Ted-ed video ends on a slightly positive note. It highlighted the advancement in medicine which has significantly improved survival rates. There continues to be new discoveries and treatments. As with sin, the prognosis is grave. That cancerous stem cell from the Garden of Eden is far too stubborn and aggressive. Whether we think that the Eden episode is a Jewish fable or a godly synopsis, the undeniable fact of human mortality is spelt out. There isn't a cure.

But where there is no cure for sin, there is forgiveness by a gracious God. A God who recognises that we are not capable of leading sinless lives, so He constantly asks us to hand over our cancers to Him. Constantly reminding us that He has paid the ultimate price for our sins so that we don't have to. 

For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him;

as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.                                  ~ Psalm 103: 11-12

The Need for God?

Dan Brown, the author of The Da Vinci Code, recently remarked that AI would replace the need for God. He said, "We will start to find our spiritual experiences through our interconnections with each other." He added, "Our need for that exterior god, that sits up there and judges us ... will diminish and eventually disappear." Although what he wanted to say was that there is no need for God, what he was really saying was that God can be substituted. He was predicting that the collective wisdom of humankind can synthesize intelligence artificially to satisfy a longing that we have so far misplaced with a God that does not really exist. In other word, putting mankind onto his rightful throne; but not really, because his fate will be dictated by something artificial even though seemingly real.

Advances in IA have indeed been feeding our emotional vacuums. It draws on a vast sample of human actions to formulate the expected human behaviour. It trawls through  our digital footprints to figure out what we like and offers us more of it. It suggests to us what other things we may have been missing out on. It puts you in touch with others who have the same interests and who can validate your feelings. Where it cannot directly fulfil your needs, it can suggest substitutes. Where you cannot find satisfaction in the real world, it can bring you into an alternate world - hyper realistic online games, virtual reality, chatbots. If you can find something out there that can satisfy you, why subject yourself to someone that may have different values from you, right? If you have a deep desire to tattoo your eyeballs, why should anyone judge you for it, right?

Dan Brown is sorta daying that if you want to be judged you can choose God; for everything and anything else you have AI. That is a rather odd position to take when information explosion have only confirmed to us that humankind is far from solving the issues of poverty, bullying and persecution, lack of gun control in certain countries, exploitation - whether natural resources, animals human beings. There are all forms of human misery inflicted by humans. Does IA offer us the hope that the human condition will be somehow be perfected by our collective experiences? Augmented reality makes us live in our own bubble of comfort, not realising that there are so many problems and issues out there that cannot be solve by an algorithm.

Although humans have made phenomenal advancements, we are far from understanding all the mysteries of life. We can improve our prediction of an earthquake and a resultant tsunami, but there is still little we can do to prevent them. We know there are risks of a meteor colliding with Earth, but all we can do is to assure ourselves that the probability is remote so far. Our limited understanding of the universe is laid bare this week when scientists witnessed two neutron stars colliding. We celebrate this achievement even though we only got to know about this 130 millions years Isn't it too soon for us to rule out the need for God?

Last Sunday, the guest speaker at the church service talked about how as a Christian we can take what we learn from the bitterness of life and help others to know that there is a God. He made intermittent references to a man name Joe. A Joe whose fiancée accidentally drowned the day before their wedding; the Joe who sent a poem to comfort his gravely ill mother because he was too far away from home to be with her. The Joe who eventually found love again and was due to be married, but his fiancée died suddenly of pneumonia. Joseph M. Scriven's poem to his mother entitled "Pray Without Ceasing" was set to music and known worldwide as the hymn "What a Friend We have in Jesus".  There are no answers to the real questions of life and death until we are willing to listen to the answer God has been offering to us.

1. Are we weak and heavy-laden,
   Cumbered with a load of care?
   Precious Savior, still our refuge—
   Take it to the Lord in prayer.
   Do thy friends despise, forsake thee?
   Take it to the Lord in prayer!
   In His arms He’ll take and shield thee,
   Thou wilt find a solace there.
2. 
   

Children's Day 2017

For the school's Children's Day celebration, my second son had the option to dress up as a working adult. He only told us about it 2 days before so there was no time to shop for a costume.  After some deliberation, he settled on dressing up as a tour guide. He has a bright orange sports cap from Maldives which he often uses when he pretends to be a hip-hop dancer. We bought him a pair of sunglasses and DIYed a tour guide flag pole. Mei Mei came up with the name of the tour company - Cool Tours.  She later asked if my son was really going to be a tour guide when he grows up. Given his dislike for walking and the heat, I don't think that is likely.

This morning my wife was trying to convince my son to practise on the piano more regularly. She told him that he could consider becoming a composer, which would allow him to work from home when he grows up. He was horrified by the idea. He said, "There would be no meetings, no computers, no emails and no office". He has visited my previous workplace several time before and thinks he would like to work in a bank. I certainly have meetings and emails - made be feel so thankful for the job that I do.

He's also been asking questions about National Service because my eldest son will be enlisting next year. One thing that concerned him was whether he would be able to have his regular doses of fresh milk, at least 4 times a day. He would not go to sleep without a cup of milk no matter how tired he feels. He is the reason why my daughter, who is a picky eater, also drinks so much milk. So as funny as it may have sounded at first, we shared his concern. How was he going to manage without milk? He said we will have to order lots of UHT milk for him to bring back to camp in the weekends. Glad we found a solution for that one.

Kids say the funniest things and it is great fun to play along. Who knows what jobs they will do when they grow up. But I hope that whatever they do, they will become the person that God wants them to be. Thank God for them.