Start Of A New Family Journey

Over the past three weeks our family had been rather busy. A hive of activities as our daughter became engaged to be married to someone she met while studying at the same university in the United Kingdom. They have known each other for about four years now and because of the physical distance separating them, they decided to settle down next April 2010.

Officially they were engaged to be married on March 28 Saturday when both sets of parents met over lunch and we discussed what we felt best for our children and agree with them that they will be married on April 03, 2010 Saturday. So now that the date has been set, a series of activities will have to be initiated over the next couple of months.

After the wedding, our daughter will be emigrating to leave in Birmingham, UK, as our future son-in-grace is working with Deloitte's PPL and waiting to secure his UK PR (he is a Malaysian Chinese with Sarawakan blood) and so will have to start planning her packing in addition to getting things organized for the wedding. In fact there will be three sets of celebrations - wedding lunch in Singapore followed by a family dinner over at Sibu in Sarawak and culminating in a wedding dinner over at Kuala Lumpur - spread over 8 days and can get pretty hectic.

And how did the family take the news? well, there were smiles all round as both sides were very supportive of the pending union. In fact the troop i snow working on the logistics for the Event next year. And I dare say that the wedding will draw everyone tighter together as it will become the focal point and we do need this event to do just that. So come Saturday April 03 the families will come together to celebrate the union with a church wedding in the morning followed by a wedding luncheon at Pan Pacific Hotel and then those family members who were supposed to travel to Kuala Lumpur the following Saturday for the wedding dinner will do so.

So we are looking forward to celebrate the blessed union between Mr Joshua Ting and Ms Adeline Li come April 2010. Congratulations beloveds.

What's In A Memorial?

Today marks the 3rd anniversary of the passing of my earthly father back to the Lord and even as we enter into the Holy Week, I am being reminded of what the Lord instructed the children of Israel to do - to build memorials as a testimony of the goodness of our Lord.

In the Old Testament, memorials are in visible forms - stones raised one on top of another to form a column or markers placed at strategic locations to mark boundaries or festivals to remind them of the goodness of the Lord. And in the New Covenant, we have one very prominent memorial - the Cross of Jesus Christ. Each year, the Church celebrates the sacrifice of our Lord on the Cross and worships Him for His atoning death and in three days, we will be doing just that on Good Friday.

Good Friday is meant to be a time of remembrance of the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and it is for joy and thanksgiving that we are to observe them. I do not, for once, believe that the Lord meant for us to be so solemn that we cannot even share moments of joy by having a meal together or perhaps even celebrating a wedding. I believe each day we are to live our lives in celebration of the finished work of Christ on the Cross - that we are wondrously saved by that one atoning death and there is nothing more to be added.

Our lives are meant to be a reflection of that grace we have in Him - so live life to its fullest in the divine health that His precious Blood had redeemed us for and stop accepting the lies that the devil throws in our direction that we suffer because of our ancestors. Indeed, when the Lord died on the Cross, He did not die for specifics but His death avails for everything and it spans across the time continuum because God lives outside of time.