Above all else

I am glad to be part of a church that prays, serves and preaches the Good News.  I am particularly grateful that the church disciples every member to participate, and not just the "evangelism committee" or the "prayer committee".  Every member is discipled to pray, and to rise up to lead prayer, not just for himself or herself, but for the needs of the church and our country.  We take turns to lead a "prayer tower" that runs in the church building 24 hours round the clock.  Every member is discipled to serve the community - for our cell, we distribute bread to the rental flats every month.  Every member is discipled to preach the Good News - we regularly hold each other accountable for the lives of our family members, friends and colleagues. This sort of body of Christ in action is tremendously energising to be part of.  It is not just talk, not just "God bless me/my family's needs", not just gathering in holy huddles, and not mere the...

When I was in the army, I used to dread Standard Obstacle Course (SOC) training - in those days, SOC meant wearing your battle gear, including helmet, boots, rifle, full waterbottles, grenades, mine prodder, torchlight and so on (we used to call it a "Christmas tree" because of all the "ornaments" hung on us, haha!), running a couple hundred metres, then going through a series of obstacles like a low wall, rope climb, Jacob's ladder, monkey bars, parallel bars etc and then finishing off with another run of a couple hundred metres, I can't remember exactly. SOC training was tough.  All that gear was really heavy!  I recently tried the parallel bars and could barely prop myself up, much less stagger to the end.  I can't believe we used to do the monkey bars and all the other obstacles while hauling around all the extra weight! One time, the instructor got us to run multiple rounds of SOC.  One round is usually enough to kill you, but he made us...

So the Education Minister has announced changes to the PSLE grading system, and a review of the Direct School Admissions (DSA) programme for school children transitioning from primary to secondary school.  In a nutshell, the highly gradated PSLE T-score will be replaced with wider grade bands, while the DSA programme will be reviewed to better meet its "original purpose" of recognising extra-curricular aptitude as opposed to, I presume, examination skills or some other academic talent - let's say being particularly good in Maths. In an earlier post , I shared my heart-to-heart talk with my son on why people need to go to school - it is not merely to do well to get to the next level of education, get a good job, and consequently earn a good living.  If that were the case, then why would kids with wealthy parents need to go to school?  All their own needs are well provided for - they could just stay at home all day and play computer games till they're 90. No - our...

As my kids go through the teenage years, it increasingly feels like the days of parenthood may soon start fading into the rear view mirror.  So it really made my day when, one evening, the older one asked, "Daddy can you tuck me in later?" and then separately, the younger one asked, "Is it conversation time yet?  Can we do it with the whole family?" It's hard not to want to hold our children really tightly and not let go - they are so precious!  Yet one day, we'll have to.  One day (even though I constantly grumble about it now) I will no longer have to wake up the boy to go to school - I'll wake up and find he's gotten up, dressed and left for school.  Just like my daughter already does.  One day, I'll be standing in church next to my daughter, and the pastor will ask, "who gives this bride away?".  I presume that is the point at which I am supposed to burst into tears and yell "NOOOOOO". But really, the day my kids b...