April 2018 / COOS Extension Building along Margaret Drive - finally Up!
1 Chron 4:10 - The very famous prayer of Jabez "Enlarge my tent!"
Perhaps it is indeed a season of 'enlargement'. This April saw the completion of the extension church building project which commenced way back in 2016. The 5 storey building with 4 basement of car park lots.
The Old Church bell from old premises will be hoisted up in this new extension!
Here comes the bell goes Ding Dong....
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As the physical church building took its shape, I was pondering over the Jabez prayer over the recent sermon. The church is more than a building or extension thereof. It comprises of a body of His children with love in action more than anything. Afterall, Paul said in 1 Cor 13 that if we speak with tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, we will just be a body of sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. Like the old church bell that will go ding-dong ding dong!
In this same month, we finally got our little dream single-storey home in JB. HDBs in little red dot are now crazily high too, hitting the million mark. With the en bloc craze - private ones are also in the millions for less than 1000 sq ft! This is just for the range of apartments - we can never dream of a little house with land in red dot now.
So now, physical dwelling too had been so called "extended", not in red dot, but beyond its shores, across the causeway! LOL. Acts 1:8 in action....part of it fulfilled..not in Jerusalem but , perhaps JB.... Judea or Samaria for now.
Tent & Clay thots
The little Clay Sheep done by M for part of the COOS clay facade at the new extension building
Recently just in this past week, we saw 3 traffic accidents. 19 year old Kathy Ong killed in Clementi, another 23 at Upper Bukit Timah and another 3 who perished at YCK junctioned, aged 50s,60s, and 70s. For these 3, i believe they did not even had any seconds to know that Death was imminent because the lorry came and hit them from behind them in a sudden.
I am reminded of the new handmade clays done by many members of the church in preparation of this new facade decoration for this new extension building. Interestingly, my friend M did a Sheep clay. What an awesome reminder! We are merely His Sheep and He is our Chief Shepherd!
The recent spate of deaths now reminded me of 2 Cor 5:1 "For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens"
The late Kathy Ong, at 19 had reflected on death and wrote paragraphs of how she imagined her funeral to be. She was only 19! How many of us would be reflecting on death to come? It is a certainty and 100% probability of its occurrence. The only missing thing? We don't know when. Only Our Creator God knows. HAVE YOU EVER THOUGHT OF DEATH & HOW PREPARED TO LEAVE EARTH?
So here is a joke about living healthily. Some people even go to the extreme of weighing their food before taking or cooking :(
Eat well, sleep well, die anyway.
So..................
- have you done your E-passport?
- have you bought your E-travel insurance?
(Do you know that in this present earthly world, we have gone so high tech that the above 2 can be done INSTANTLY at a click of few buttons?)
So have you secured your eternal life cross over in Jesus Christ who came to earth to die for us , our sins , so that whoever who believe in His shall never die but live.
The loved ones of the deceased grief. So would the loved ones of the drivers who cause their demise grief too. Alas- this is what we call accidents.
We may argue that the sins of the drivers may be major and punishable with death but so are our own sins of causing death through our words spoken - consciously or unconsciously.
Like the account of the 2 thieves who were crucified beside Jesus in Luke 23, one thief asked for Jesus for forgiveness at the cross, unlike the other one who mocked and blasphemed Him, who do you think would enter into His Kingdom?
We are merely earthen vessels made of earth.
2 Cor 4. So we have received mercy, we faint not....For we preach not ourselves but Christ Jesus the Lord. We have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not us. We have the same spirit of faith "I believed" and therefore I speak. The same spirit which raised Jesus up from death to life is also present in us. That is His abundant grace given to all. We just need to repent in that instant to get our E-passport and Insurance. Instantaneously. You do not even need to have a PC or mobile apps to get this assurance.
We look not at things which are seen , for the things which are seen are temporal (like the new extended new church building or home), but the things which are not seen are ETERNAL.
Late Kathy had prepared for her own eternal home at an early age and even prepared her insight of her own funeral. She was way way prepared.
Some of the people killed in the recent accidents did not even have the time to utter this prayer. They were caught so off guard. How would they know that Death had come for them from behind in a fleeting moment?
Prayer:
For those who know the Lord Jesus, the Chief Shepherd, we pray for enlargement of our spiritual tent. Though our inward man perish, yet the inward man be renewed , revived, and enlarged in mercy, grace and compassion day by day , until we are called Home.
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