Date: 08-12-24
Preacher: Mrs Dorothy Kao
Title: Christmas Carols Sound
Christmas Carols Sound
The title seems innocuous enough, even festive, and coupled with her usual motherly fashion, the congregation could be forgiven to expect a Christmasy message. But from the lead-in to the end, it was a solemn reminder to one and all, of our responsibilities as Christians when the carols sound. The biblical references were taken from Matthew 1:21-23 and Luke 1:78-79.
In the introduction, Mrs Kao shared the lyrics of a song composed by some singers from the UK who got together to raise funds and shared the love of Christ during the great famine of 1983 to 1985 in Ethiopia where 400000 lives were lost. Now 40 years later, some singers again got together to raise funds for the same cause but although the same song was used, the lyrics pertaining to the love of God had been replaced. She suspected that perhaps the singers that got together this time round may not all be Christians. So Mrs Kao asked how in this age and time do we bring glory to God and convince others how dependable our God is?
She highlighted 3 areas on the dependability of God. The first is Jesus ‘proclaim the greatest love’. The second is God gives ‘Unconditional love’ and the third, points to the ‘Call of Jesus’.
To support her points, her personal testimonies, which revolved around her family life as a young believer, were easily identifiable, and not only were they pertinent and humorous but told in her motherly way, seemed to downplay the struggles she went through as a young Christian. However, to me, the greatest thing is that the more she downplayed her struggles the more glory is ascribed to God. It’s God way to use her mightily and it’s not false modesty.
There was the struggle with her younger sister who taunted her and sharing the same sleeping space with her, would squeeze her to a corner. This ‘trained’ her so much so that when she went on mission trips she would be able to sleep only on a strip of narrow plank. As a young Christian, Chinese New Year would bring challenges of the sustenance kind. As she would not partake of the food that was offered to the deities she would go to her Malay neighbours to ‘work’ for food. Then one year, her dependable God moved her mother so much so she started to set aside some dishes that would not be offered to the deities for her to eat. There was the day when her grandma brought her to a Chinese medium and the medium then testified to her grandma that somehow she could not summon any spirit that day as she had brought along something that was blocking her from summoning spirits.
And to those of us on the verge of giving up, she shared the testimony of an elderly lady who use to distribute tracks on Christianity at a corner somewhere in Singapore. She soon felt discouraged and gave up. One day after a year or so, she decided to go back to her corner and was surprised to find a young lady giving out tracks too. She then asked the lady why she was there distributing tracks and was told that she was converted by an elderly lady who gave a track to her. She was grateful and wondered whether the elderly lady who gave her the track was still alive. The elderly lady revealed that she was the one who gave her the track.
And so where will you be when the carols sound? Will you be exuding the fragrance of Christ?
