BY PR EVANGELINE CHEONG

Chinese New Year is around the corner and with that, the questions that relatives ask while we eat melon seeds together: What are you going to study? Where are you going to work? When are you going to find a boyfriend? I am always ready for these questions, but the times when I was searching for purpose and meaning in life, answering these questions was very hard! It seemed like I had to justify my choices in life, that I was useful and productive or at least socially acceptable in their eyes. I knew that they loved me and wanted me to be happy, yet their questions implied that if I found a right and good purpose in life, I would be happy.

BY PR EVANGELINE CHEONG

⁹ As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love.

¹⁰ If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love,  just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.

¹¹ These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full. JOHN 15:9-11

Last week I wrote that there is no lack of hope in our new year with God as we have a living hope in Christ. But that’s not the only thing that we as God’s people have in abundance. Jesus tells us that we have His joy and when His joy becomes ours, it is a full and complete joy (John 15:11)

BY PR EVANGELINE CHEONG

³ Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,

⁴ and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you,

⁵ who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. - 1 Peter 1:3-5

BY ELDER TONY LOW

If we were to ask someone to describe what the year is like, we should not be surprised by words/phrases such as work from home, zoom meetings, social distancing, unprecedented, uncharted, flattening the curve, swab test, PPE, PCR, etc.  Beyond the new lexicon of buzzwords inspired by the Covid-19 pandemic, 2020 is a year where many so called ‘new normals’ are birthed, and a synchronous war cry to embrace them on a global scale.  And many did so for good reasons.

BY REV GOH YONG KUANG

In him was life, and the life was the light of men.

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. - John 1: 4-5 (ESV)

We are told that Christmas will not be the same this year.  Two recent articles in the local paper carried these headlines:

“GET SET FOR A QUIETER CHRISTMAS LIGHT-UP IN ORCHARD THIS YEAR”

(The Straits Times, 6 Oct 2020)

“A NOT-SO-MERRY CHRISTMAS IN EUROPE WITH TIGHTER CURBS”

(The Straits Times, 4 Dec 2020)

BY REV GOH YONG KUANG

During the pandemic, the last thing we want, is to have a Covid19-infected person sitting or standing next to us! 

Transmission of the virus occurs primarily between people through direct or indirect contact with an infected person. The closer we are to someone who is infected, and the longer we are together, the higher our risk of getting infected!