Joie de Vivre A Wretched Man’s Quest To Follow Jesus Christ

Finally, it’s the Shabbat and today is also finally the day when I can pay a visit to Hephzibah Christian Fellowship and find out more about them.

Finding the place was a breeze. After alighting at Queenstown MRT station, it was only about a 350 meter walk to the building itself.

As advised by one of the elders, Michael, I arrived a little late as he had previously told me that services don’t really start on time as they usually have a home group at church that he leads.

It All Looks Good!

The service is held on the fourth floor, but Michael was on the second floor of the building to welcome me, which was really nice of him. Upon entering the service hall, I was pleased to find no extraneous decorations like images of saints or a figure on a crucifix. In fact, there wasn’t even a crucifix to be seen anywhere, which is great.

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Someone once remarked that it’s harder to hate a person than to love someone.

Because hate requires you to constantly expend energy directing anger and disgust at the subject. When you hate a person, you find ways to make the person’s life miserable, and this can sap your energy that might have been better spent on doing more constructive things for yourself and others around you.

In other words, hate is a destructive form of energy.

Today we find it easy to hate someone or an ideology or a group of people without giving it any second thought, but find it difficult to bring ourselves to lay down that burden that hate is and show them love.

Our human nature tells us to hit back at whoever is hitting us, and to hate with equal force those that have made themselves our enemies.

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I finally caught the name of the Fellowship — it’s called Hephzibah Christian Fellowship and is listed as a non-denominational church.

And I’ve also got the location down pat.

The building is actually along the stretch parallel to the MRT line between Queenstown and Redhill stations.

But the most interesting part is that I managed to get hold of the phone number and had a chat with Michael, one of the elders of the fellowship.

Among the things I learned is that they observe the Sabbath from 8pm Friday to 8pm Saturday, and are celebrating the seven feasts of Israel this week. I’ve also been invited to their celebration of the Yom Kippur on Sunday.

They don’t call themselves a church per se, but a gathering and fellowship of believers, hence the name. About 80 people make up their regular group, which is what I like as well, small and rather comfortable.

So it all looks like I am quite prepped to pay a visit tomorrow at three in the afternoon to learn more!

Hallelujah!

Shalom Aleichem.

Picture taken from Wikipedia .

I finally managed to get a glimpse of the name of the church that supposedly had the Saturday service on the Law of Moses this evening, and it turned out that…

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Protestant rosaries, that’s what!

Oh dear, oh my.

No, I am not condoning the site that sells them by linking to them, but you can find out by right-clicking on the picture, selecting “Properties”, and finding out the site’s location from there if you so wish.

They’ve got Anglican/Episcopal and Lutheran rosaries alongside those for Roman Catholicism.

If there’s one other thing I don’t agree with the teachings of the Roman church, it’s the practice of using rosaries, and therefore repetitions, in prayer. For our Lord Jesus Christ says this about prayer:

“But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking.”

– Matthew 6:7 (KJV)

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Casey once told me to get off my ass to find a new church to attend and fellowship, and I think I have managed to get both of that done just this morning.

There was only standing room inside the cabin of the train I was riding to work — which meant that I was off my ass — and saw a large yellow banner between, I think, Queenstown and Commonwealth stations, that advertised a church service at 3 pm Saturday on the Law of Moses.

(I board the train at Lakeside train station and alight at Tanjong Pagar every morning.)

That looks good! Now, I cannot tell for sure if they have services only on Saturdays or if it’s a one-off, but I have rarely seen churches advertising services on Saturday so that’s one positive sign.

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Six years ago on this date, September 11, more than 3,000 people lost their lives in a matter of minutes as two commercial jet airliners crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City.

I still remember it very clearly.

Just as those who experienced first-hand seeing J.F.K. shot remember vividly what they were doing at the time of his death, I remember this event so clearly like it only happened minutes ago.

My wife and I had just finished up some shopping we needed to get done at Ikea, and have just reached home. As I switched the television set on to CNN, these horrific pictures greeted us.

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