My Easter's Blessings

In the dark, I heard Mum's alarm clock ringing. I had not been waken up by a machine for months. When I got up about ten minutes later from my bed and asked her time, she told me it was almost six. We had to leave the house at 6.30am to reach the graveyard at 7am. There we were going to gather with my uncle's family to sweep the place where my grandparents had been buried. And those of us who were not Christians were going to offer food, burn paper money and other items to our defunct relatives.

One of my cousins, who had been attending a church in Batu Pahat, also did not participate in the worship. My uncle revealed for the first time that in my grandfather's family, there had been Christians during their times. Even though both my uncle and Dad were not my grandfather's biological sons, the blessing to have Jesus as the Lord and Saviour had passed from that generation to our generation through adoption.

Visiting Dad's grave later did not make me sad this time. As soon as we came back from the graveyard, I got changed, put all my luggage in the car and started my journey to Melaka. I was not going to join my family members for another round of ancestor worship at home. I had told Mum about my Easter celebration and my lunch appointment with my church members. I thanked God that she had been very tolerant with my faith.

The previous night, I had gone out with my childhood friend YT for tea and we stayed late till midnight. In spite of the little sleep, I felt fresh in the morning. It took me two hours' driving to be at Calvary Life Assembly (CLA), just on time to listen to Pastor James' Easter's sermon and to participate in the Holy Communion. Since the second half of last year, I seldom missed Sunday services there. Sometimes, I wondered if it was out of my increasing passion for Christ or due to my lack of motivation to stay longer in Batu Pahat.

We had our first Koinonia fellowship in this new church building. Albert P had booked some Calvary Care Home (CCH) children's lunch tickets late, so we had to wait for other people to be served before our turns. He was praying that free tickets would drop from Heaven so that we could queue up quickly to exchange our food. God answered his prayer within minutes! One by one, Calvarites blessed the CCH boys with their extra tickets.

After the meal, Fei Gin brought David, Paul and Luke back to her house to do baking together. John would take a lift from Andrew C to go back to CCH. After the three boys left with her, only Daniel, Matthew and Isaac were with us. Albert suggested that we would drop by at Canaan Home bookstore to survey books for Daniel.

As we were discussing which of the three boys would follow our vehicles, I made a spontaneous but unintentional request to Albert, "I also want to tumpang your car!". Without hesitation, he really agreed and kindly let me hop into his car, leaving mine at CLA. I could not be more grateful to him to temporarily release me from my voluntary job as one of the CCH Sunday afternoon driver.

We also went to Robert C's house, whose mother had just passed away at the age of ninety-four. I received an SMS from my former secondary school friend KC, whom I had encountered at the graveyard several hours earlier, informing me that another friend Ah Ban's father had died of a sudden death during his visit at a graveyard the same morning.

In Albert's car, Matthew was very keen to show me a couple of magic tricks he had learnt from Isaac's book. Later when we were back to CCH together with John, all of us spent at least half an hour reading something. I was glad that the CCH boys were initiated to books beyond their academic reading. Once they cultivated the habit to befriend books, they would no longer like to idle during their free times.

In front of an interesting book, I began to doze off. It usually happened to me when I was watching a night show. The rest also could not concentrate on reading too long. So we started to watch a Christian film on DVD. We were entertained by the live scene where Albert did ten times' sit-up with all his physical effort next to the television to imitate the actors more than the story of the movie itself.

Before Albert sent me back to CLA to take back my car, he invited me to join him and Matthew for dinner. I felt good to just sit in a car without being the driver. Later when I was travelling back to Paya Rumput with my car, I almost fell asleep again in front of the third last traffic light before my residential area. I managed to keep my mind alert until I was safely home. I began to thank Fei Gin in my mind that because of her initiative to spend the afternoon with the three CCH boys, I indirectly got a rest from driving more. Otherwise, I would have even been too tired to drive back to my place or caused an accident on the road.

As soon as I unloaded my luggage, locked the house doors and took a shower, I simply collapsed onto my bed unconsciously. I woke up three hours later to switch off the lights and continued to succumb to my sleepiness.

The next morning, I could still open my eyes. Thinking of death I had escaped the previous day, I thanked the Lord for keeping me alive.

Now I never take my life for granted since I know God has a purpose for it.