SONG AND STORY 1: A HEART FOR ONE ANOTHER

By Rev Dr Forest Koh

I wrote my first song in the early 1980s, all in Chinese. Since then, I never thought I will write in English. God encouraged me with the first song when I wrote my sermon on Psalm 34, “I Bless My Lord All The Times”.

I always believe music is a wonderful and effective tool to share God’s message. I pray to God, “Since you have called me to an English church, help me to write in English.” And then came, “A Heart for One Another.”

The seed of writing this song was planted during a CG committee meeting. The CG committee said we should have a theme song for CG month, a song that we can all identify with to promote the spirit of CG.

I prayed… and I started to think about my past two years in the pandemic as a Covid pastor, how I listened to the pain and suffering of my brothers and sisters. I knew many were meeting on the screen and many were feeling very lethargic, some persevered, and some had disappeared.

On my end, frankly, I enjoyed the past two years as a Covid pastor. Never was there a time in history when pastors did not have to go to church on Sunday but stared at the screen!

I took the advantage of the pandemic to meet people one-to-one. It was always a fruitful experience as I listened to their stories. I believe this was the work of the Spirit, as people were so willing to open up and share their thoughts about

GPC and their hearts with me. The one to two hours of fellowship brought us so much closer together than a thousand handshakes on a Sunday morning. (Please don’t get me wrong that I don’t want to shake your hand. It is so precious to shake hands after the pandemic because not everyone is comfortable with that )

Then I wrote,

We need a heart for one another to keep us together

We need a heart for one another to sing through storm and thunder

We need a heart for one another to see what really matters.

As a pastor, I need to know who you are before I know what to feed you with and how to feed you. For now, perhaps, a pair of listening ears is still what you need. I know I will get stuck in relationships somewhere along the way, but I said to myself, “It is okay, keep on listening!” I think it was just like how Joshua got stuck by my lyrics when he composed the music. And then something deeper surfaced.

(To be continued….)