Living with limitations

We were at Peacehaven Nursing Home this morning to conduct chapel service and visit the residents there. Good to see the folk who have come to know us and appreciate our visit. Many of them are in wheelchairs, some remain in bed all the time and have to be fed with tubes.

Come to think of it, all of us have to live with some form of limitation. Singapore is only a small island state - a city without a country or as former Indonesian President Habibie called it, 'the little red dot.' Being small we have to live limitations, for example, the Government has to place restrictions on the number of vehicles. So we have what is called the COE (certificate of entitlement) and ERP etc.
We don't own a car so have to depend on public transport or travel on Shanks mare.

For me and my wife, we have been privileged to live outside Singapore for a large portion of our lives -almost 29 years outside this island; in Malaysia (14 years), in Hong Kong and Taiwan (7 1/2 years) Philippines (3 years) and London (4 years)
Finally it was our joy to return to this little red dot.

G K Chesterton writing out Robinson Crusoe said, "The charm of Rebinson Crusoe is not in the fact that he could find his way to a remote island, but in the fact that he could not find any way of getting away from it." Here is truth of human experience. We all have to learn to live with limitations. It is a fact of life that freedom does not mean living out in limitlessness of time and space. You and I are confined to a particular period of time and to a certain portion of the earth. Life as we know it is limited at the very beginning by the circumstances of the time and place of birth.

I was telling someone this morning that I began life at a little kampong at Norfolk Road, grew up in Kim Keat Rd and Lorong Limau in the Balestier area and now living on the western side of Singapore - Upper Bukit Timah. I suppose I shall end life here or rather take off from here. It does not matter where I take off from, the important thing is where I am going to live for eternity. For this I am assured, my Lord has promised me, He has gone to prepare a place for me and one day will come to take me to Himself. Yes, from a life of limitation, to heaven not bounded by place or time!

All of us have to live with limitations while on earth. Despite the limitations we are free in Christ.