Surprising Grace

Last month I went "on retreat" to a beautiful place on a hill overlooking a lake. A group of teenagers were there at the same time on a retreat programme organised by their school. I was by turns annoyed, when the noise they were making made it difficult for me to experience the silence I was hoping for, and sympathetic, when I overheard their emotional sharing with each other about their lives, not without tears. It reminded me that teenage life is not easy! One evening I was sitting quietly by myself in the garden. The sun was setting to the west, a fiery sphere of liquid gold descending gently into the silhouettes of trees cresting the hill, coloring the veils of cloud streaming across the sky a shimmering red, yellow, orange, and purple. The glorious beauty of it touched me somewhere deep inside. If I hadn't already believed in God, I would have at that moment. Into this sacred moment, of course, barged a bunch of chattering teenagers... though the beauty of th...

As I sit here writing, rain is pouring in sheets outside. Not any ordinary rain, but what Filipinos call “habagat” (monsoon rain), made stronger by the tail end of a typhoon. I had never feared rain before living in the Philippines, even the thunder and lightning storms that came so often to my native Singapore. However strong the rain, you never worried for your safety. Here, though, I have learnt a better reverence for the forces of nature. The Philippines experiences an average of 20 typhoons every year. I remember sitting and looking out the window during my first serious typhoon, with the electricity out, awed by the force of the winds lashing the trees outside. In the evening, when the storm had quieted and we could venture out again, the neighbours were also emerging from their houses and there was a sense of camaraderie on the street. People took out their radios and sat around. Later on, we heard the stories of trees falling across roads and roofs being blown off and, in ...