Firstly, I would like to thank God for keeping me, my family, and friends in good health. I would also like to thank God for putting some very special friends in my life, like Chai Hwa, Fu Wei, Alexandra, Chester, Daryl, Jun Kai, and Natalie. Thank you for always being there for me when I needed someone to talk to and share my problems with. Thank you for always being my pillar of support, always giving me the assurance I needed, and for all the encouragement you gave me. I truly appreciate the friendship we have and I treasure every moment of it.

Secondly, I would like to thank God for the opportunity to attend chapel camp this year. Being in the polytechnic, the school academic calendar is not fixed every year and I missed the last chapel camp because I had lessons to attend. However, thank God that this year my school calendar permits me to attend chapel camp. Initially, I see chapel camp as a holiday instead of a time to learn more about God’s Word. I just wanted to go to Malacca and spend the days playing bridge and going shopping with my friends. What’s more, with my parents in Singapore, I could practically do anything I wanted.

Seeing that there were two sermons every morning, I felt that it could be very draining and I did not want to pay attention to the Word of God. Thankfully, Pastor Henson Lim could keep me awake with his charismatic voice and I received quite a good percentage of what God wanted to tell me. In addition, I also took sermon notes and kept them till today. Normally, the sermon notes I copied would end up somewhere undesirable. This time it was just different. I not only kept the sermon notes, but I put them up on my blog for everyone to see. I just felt so proud of God’s Word after coming back from chapel camp.

The next step was to apply what I learnt from chapel camp into my life. Here is one example about digging deep. For me, quiet time used to be a five minute affair. It was more like a routine to me than a personal time with God. If I ever took more than five minutes to do my quiet time, the only reason is that because the passage for that day is too long that five minutes is not enough.

Upon coming back from chapel camp, quiet time has a new meaning to it. I fed on the Word on God such that it touched me deeply. I was doing my quiet time one day just after chapel camp, and the topic for that day was entitled “The Glory Of Humility.” Reading the article for the first time, I did not quite get what it was trying to tell me. At that time, the five minute mark was closing in already, but I was not distracted by the time. I vividly remembered Pastor Henson Lim telling us that if we cannot understand the article, just keep reading and reading until you get the meaning. By the way, reading is so not my cup of tea and going beyond five minutes is like a torture.

I continued reading and reading to a point that I started to break down and cry. I just could not control my emotions at that point of time. Initially, I thought that I cried because the article was very touching, but after digging deep, I realised that God was trying to tell me to get out of my egomaniacal self, which is very true of me.

The article reads, 'Rulers stride through the world with bodyguards, fanfare, and flashing jewellery. In contrast, God’s visit to earth took place in a shelter for animals, with no attendants present and nowhere to lay the newborn King but a feed trough. Indeed, the event that divided history into two parts may have had more animal than human witnesses.' I was so amazed by God’s act of humility. If I were to follow him, I told myself that I must first put down my pride, because that was God’s very first act when he came down to earth.