Friday Night

I went to Brian's home at Pasir Panjang for the upteen time last night, but for the first time, it was for something other than just an invitation by Brian to sample Auntie Janette's best-in-the-world cooking.

I finally shrugged off the procrastination to check out one of my cell group options. Last night, Auntie Janette invited the cell that Brian's older sister, Emily has settled into, for dinner.

In the end, I was so glad to have chosen to go. Because when Andrea first asked me if I, along with a few others, were interested in checking the cell out, I was torn between going for a friend's 21st birthday party and checking out this cell led by Jerry and Pei Chi.

But after talking to Ailing at her surprise birthday dinner on Thursday night, I decided that while I probably would not have been missed among the different groups of people at Miss W's birthday party, I would have done myself a great disfavour if I did not do anything that would help foster my relationship with God.

I decided to do something just for myself for once, and something that would be in line with the theme for my sabbatical year in 2006.

More than just Auntie Janette's excellent Chinese cooking - which incidentally, was the first time I sampled because previously it was always just "Western" fare like pork knuckles and lamb, which still rocked my socks off, or on another occasion, the also very fanta-bulous roll-it-yourself popiah; I thought being the youngest for once in a cell group was totally great!

For once, everybody would not be looking at me for some words of spiritual guidance as the oldest person and therefore (implicitly) the spiritual giant among them.

For once, there was a real chance that I would have been treated as a spiritual equal or less, because the people there were mostly in their late-twenties and early thirties, married and with kids.

And I found that to be utterly liberating since it was not a condescending kind of spiritual less, but rather, more of an absence of being assumed to be on a higher spiritual or moral high ground.

Which may puzzle many of you, but this has been something that I have been looking for in ages. Because quite honestly, just because I serve in church and on VCF in school does not make me as strong a Christian as people would think I am.

I think at the end of the day, I need a small group that I know would really know better simply because the people in it have all gone through more of life than I have.

Because at the end of the day, I thought what made the whole experience different last night was the depth of the cell members' life experience and also their oh-so-genuine love for one another.

It was an experience that was rooted in reality, unpretentious and dealt with what was pertinent.

Perhaps it had a lot to do with what Jerry explained about the philosophy of the cell - putting people first ahead of just trudging through the Bible study materials.

"Because some times, there may be a brother or a sister who has just been battered quite badly by the world in the last week and needs some form of uplifting," he said.

That, he helpfully explained to the bunch of newbies last night, was why a period of sharing came immediately after the short time of worship.

More than just being refreshingly candid and helpful to deepeening ties among cell members, this period of sharing of not only problems but also joys, was something that struck a deep chord with me.

Because the thanksgiving and the sharing of joy is also bearing testimony to answered prayers, but more importantly, demonstrative of the fact that God is not only in our troubles, but also our joys as well and therefore not treating God like a vending machine.

It may sound utterly cliche, but a basic truth as well - so basic that it has escaped me all this while I have been leading cell, especially in the last year or two.

In my valiant attempts not to treat God as a vending machine, I have stopped going to God with my problems and troubles instead of also taking my joys to him on top of my own struggles.

And in the current cell and the previous one I co-led with Jimmy, I have mindlessly succumbed to my cell members' demands that I finish Bible study in as fast a time as possible, so that they can all have lunch. But because I wanted to ensure they had their physical nourishment, I had neglected their spiritual nourishment as well.

Cell is about community and ties as much as it is about Bible study. On hindsight, setting aside time for sharing - of problems and of thanksgiving, is crucial. Even if there is nothing that people want to talk about, it is important to set aside time for that.

I realise that I have failed in that aspect, because I have yielded to the requests to finish earlier. While I am mindful that I should not attribute my entire failure to that, it played a huge part especially since almost everybody in the cell I started this year was new to me.

But even before I could dwell upon this bout of reflection that bordered on an alternation between self-pity and self-bashing, Jerry said something that kind of stopped my wondering thoughts.

"But God is one who always forgives. It is important to pick ourselves up each time we fall."

But that, as Emily shared what a student told her, "you need to desperately want God for Him to be real to you."

The total time that we took for cell was barely two hours. Pei Chi did not take beyond three questions from the 1 Peter guide for discussion. Maybe it has got to do with the fact that half of the cell members were professional teachers in one way or another, but the discussion was tight and made more than adequate direct references to the Bible.

All in all, I was not only blessed with physical nourishment in the form of Auntie Janette's excellent culinary hospitality, but also spiritual nourishment in the company of older people of God and their comparatively richer life experience that made the Word so much more real to me.