We touched a metal plaque placed in the ground just before we left the Buchenwald memorial. The ambient temperature was 14 degrees Celsius. There was a light breeze. The guide asked us why the plaque was warm. We didn’t know. After listening to our silence, he told us there was a heating system below the …
Lutherans don’t make pilgrimage. But if they did, one of the sites on their list would be the room in which Martin Luther, in 1522, translated the New Testament portion of the Bible from Greek into German. The room is in on a hilltop, in a castle. The castle is managed by a foundation which …
As I said in my previous post, Rev Wilhelm Loehe trained women to be deaconesses, to serve people in need. His work was in Neuendettelsau, in the middle of the 19th century. Diaconal service was born in the church. As time passed, expectation arose that the care of the sick, elderly, infirm, and disabled is …
Mission EineWelt (One World Mission) is the centre for partnership, development, and mission of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria. It conducts “mission” activities both within and outside Germany. I put “mission” in parentheses because it’s not just about proclaiming the gospel. It’s about apprehending God’s goals for the world, the current state of the …
28 of us sat for about four hours in the Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA), nodding off on unfriendly seats, waiting for our flight to depart at 2:25 am on Monday morning. The captain of one of the two Airbus 380 planes told us the crew comprised 18 nationalities. I added that piece of trivia …
What does faith have to do with public policy and politics? My “insider experience” of Christian faith spans four denominations, nine congregations, 45 years. For the first 30 years, I kept my faith personal, or within the churches of which I was a member. After the Hindraf and Bersih rallies in 2007 which contested public …
Have you ever read a book and said to yourself “I wish I could meet those characters in that book. I wish they can come to life and chat with me.” I’ve just read one such book. It’s “Heavenly Vision, the story of the Lutheran Church in Malaysia and Singapore 1952 – 1991” by Warren …
Faith that moves mountains: the ordination of women Read More »
Following Christ is not as straight forward as I thought. It can be pretty messy. There’s actually a book called Messy Christianity by Mike Yaconelli, a very good read. The cross was stained with blood and plasma, and resurrection doesn’t mean reversal (despite what some preachers have said). We are to count the cost of …
John Nelson and his wife Betty Lou came from America to Malaya in 1955. They came as missionaries. They came during the Malayan Emergency. How I came to know and meet them in person is close to a miracle. I was asked by Nelson Leong to do some research on LCM. Rev John Nelson’s name …
“Yesu Lei!” A story of 2 early Lutheran missionaries in Malaya Read More »
For the longest time since I was invited to ponder on the last days of Jesus, I found myself reluctant to go deep into the garden of Gethsemane. It was too much for me. Gethsemane was a place of intense struggle. It was where Jesus sweated blood. Hematohidrosis is a medical condition arising from extreme …
