Recently I was passing through Tiong Bahru and it occurred to me that soon, despite conservation measures in the area, the area would change and look different once more as it had many times in the last 30 years or so. And that made me a little bit sad. It’s not that change is the enemy, much of the change that I see around me has been for good reasons and has good results. It’s that change makes me – us – feel adrift. With no physical anchors to show that our past did happen here, no familiar landmarks to mentally re-enact memories against, the past feels unreal, and sometimes even inconsequential. And even more so as time passes and it feels like no one else shares these memories with you. It doesn’t matter how much I try to describe the terrapin pond and the dark corridors of Tiong Bahru Market, if you weren’t there, it’s hard for you to understand.
And now we are preparing for A&A. To be honest, I’m not sure that I myself am mentally prepared to come through Dhoby Ghaut and see a different ORPC, even though the Sanctuary remains. All my memories of the last 22 years in ORPC are of the buildings in the present form, current steps to Dunman Hall and the umbrellas excepted. Moving away is going to be really hard for me emotionally, I think, even though I’m up to my neck in the preparations for all of these changes. And returning when the construction work is done is going to be bittersweet. The work is needed, the changes are for the better, but we are still allowed to be sad about it.
But also I am thankful. Lots of things are going to change for us in the next 2-3 years in terms of our locations, building, and even how we do worship to some extent. But despite all the changes I am thankful because I know that this church is not only about where we worship, what our building is like, or even how our worship is like. I am thankful because at our heart, ORPC is about making disciples, about a common goal to know God and to make Him known. ORPC is about God’s people coming together to worship God and to do His will. Our people’s love for God will not change even as we go through all these changes together, and more importantly, God will not change. We have certainty in change; we can embrace the change because of this – because our God is an unchanging God, a faithful God who will be with us through all these changes, who will use the changes for His glory. Hallelujah!