The Nelson Family Indonesia

You can see the heat and humidity in Singapore. It hangs over everything, seeps into everything, drains energy and melts ice cubes at a pace that constantly astounds me. Walking just a few steps, not even a city block in a city where blocks can come up short before you know it, walking just that little way leaves me soaked and wringing out my handkerchief. Handkerchiefs are one of my most indispensable survival tools in Southeast Asia.

This is a quick trip – as quick as I was able to make it. In Friday afternoon, gathering for fellowship and worship Friday night and back home Saturday. But even short trips are blessings. Even short times together provide strength and encouragement, touchstones to who we are and Whose we are. It’s easier to remember those things together than alone, oftentimes easier to see grace and forgiveness in others’ lives than be confident of it in our own. To sing together, to recite God’s Word, to taste forgiveness in the bread and wine that is infinitely more but nothing less, these are blessings.

A large portion of the downtown area of Singapore is built on reclaimed land. Land clawed back from the that surrounds and isolates and nurtures this city-state. It’s a living reminder of who we are in Christ. Reclaimed. And in that unlikely and otherwise unlovable ugliness God plants and builds and creates. Re-creates. Re-forms. Re-shapes us into the seminal sons and daughters who are the heirs of the kingdom of heaven as gawking, amazed children eternally discovering our Father’s goodness. Singapore is a good place to come and be shown if mankind is capable of this kind of beauty in land formerly considered lost to the ravages of untamed waters, what greater beauty and more eternal substance is God capable in your heart and mine!