Tiong Bahru & Moving

I was just watching a traditional Chinese funeral procession go past my window. A few old folks came to their windows and took a peep too. These song lyrics came to mind:

Goodbye my friend it's hard to die
When all the birds are singing in the sky
Now that spring is in the air

Where I live now in Tiong Bahru presents an odd mix of people. There are two main groups living in the SIT estate. Either very old folks who still speak in dialect, or young rich expats. There are hardly any locals until you cross over to the newer HDBs along Boon Tiong Road.

Singapore as I knew it, as my father and my grandfather before me knew it no longer exists. The roads we used to know and the buildings now stand only in our memory. In the past, if you'd asked me what I missed about Singapore while overseas, I would have told you that I missed the people, the food and some places where I used to hang out. 

Presently, my loved ones are scattered across the globe. All the places that I used to hang out (which is the whole of Singapore) have changed drastically. The food I used to love in my childhood too, either closed down or had its flavor changed. In short, there are very few things here that I will miss. And I am sure that in five years time, most of those things will disappear too in the usual pattern.

I am sad but I know this world is not my home. My grandparents and great-grandparents did not come to Singapore because they thought they'd get rich here. They fled here to escape religious and/or political persecution from abroad, as refugees. Singapore wasn't even a country in her own right then. And yet the Lord has blessed us with growing material comforts over the generations, culminating in mine.

If they had not made the courageous decision to move, life would be very different for us right now. I probably would not exist.

I am still not entirely sure why God would have us move again to another continent. It seems as though we are drifting further away from our countries of origin. But what does that matter in the end? It is not the starting point, but rather the finishing line that we look to.

"By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God...... All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they left, they would have opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country- a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them." (Hebrews 11:8-10, 13-16)