Merry Christmas!

Wow! This is my 3rd Christmas as a Christian, and each year i learnt and experienced this season differently. Still remember my first Christmas as a christian, i was still serving in the army. I spent the Christmas night watching 'Passion of Christ' movie in the bunk with my fellow instructors. Being a new believer then, I didn't know about bringing in spiritual conversation at that time, but i remembered all of us, christians and non-christians were so impacted by the graphics, loss of words.

This year, I was involved in the planning of the Christmas party. There were times when i really felt stretched by the work and alone in my family. In my mind, I was thinking and asking God when will i have a peaceful Christmas, whereby i can walk along the cool streets with my jacket, watching carols, stop by some coffee place and ponder on the things at the back of my mind over coffee. Thank God that I re-visited the meaning of Christmas and the reason for serving. I asked myself what does God wants me to do as a Christian during this festive season. I re-aligned myself to God, and gained greater understanding and joy of serving God and serving people who came for the party on that day. I realised that for a christian, all the more we should grasp this opportunity to share to people boldly, what Christmas is all about. Thank God for the National Council of Churches in Singapore, for bringing together a series of programmes and performance by various church groups - dance, choir, band, acapella... outside Tangs plaza, PS, Paragon... There was one night where Qiao Ping, Ian & myself sat down outside Tangs to watch the performances for 2 hours. I felt so blessed by the groups and the atmosphere of love and peace was really in the air. The hosts even share a bit here and there about God's love and the sacrifice of Jesus so that we can have eternal life, proudly proclaim the glory of God to the huge crowd there.

Through this Christmas, I have learnt more about what it means to serve God, joy thru serving, and what it means to celebrate Christmas as a christian. It is a big lesson i learnt from this season.

The year is coming to an end, perhaps we can take time to record down such experiences (things which we had made sense of) we had in our walk with God this year. Time to stock check our journey, before we step into the brand new year 2008.