Very often, we hear of people saying how they wished they knew what God’s will for them was, and lamenting that they find it hard to figure out God’s plan for their lives.
For me, I’ve learnt to see some amazing “patterns” in my own life, which on hindsight, I can only attribute to God’s mysterious and loving intervention.
Ever since my secondary school days, I’ve wanted to be a journalist, especially after my English teacher told me that I should be one, as I did consistently well in my English assignments.
I was blessed to be able to join a national daily as a reporter soon after graduation. I was also privileged to be able to gain varied journalistic experiences in different departments, from news reporting to feature writing, and from sub-editing and page layout to web page creation. I also had a chance to learn from experienced photographers.
There were times when I wasn’t exactly thrilled to be asked to move to some other department but was told by management that there was a vacancy that needed to be filled urgently. So I went along, sometimes a little reluctantly, but nevertheless I learnt what needed to be learnt and picked up varied skills along the way.
When I left this national daily to work in a local Church newspaper, I realised that all the skills I had picked up in my six years with the daily were sorely needed.
There was also a need to train my colleagues and parish-based reporters for the Church newspaper, all of which I was able to do because I had observed the way news supervisors trained their writers.
On hindsight, I realised that God was preparing me during those six years with the national daily for what he wanted me to do in the Church newspaper. Even in departments which I didn’t really ask to be transferred to then, the skills I picked up were necessary for this job.
But it was only years later that I realised this was a pattern of God’s work in my life, preparing me for a ministry that he was calling me to do.
Another “pattern” that I have come to realise recently is this:
I started learning the piano at the age of five and slowly worked my way up to achieving a diploma in music performance in my university years. However, due to studies and work demands later, piano playing was all but forgotten.
It was only about 15 years ago that I really started to brush up on my music when I joined a group of piano enthusiasts who performed for free at a public location every Sunday. This forced me to re-learn old piano pieces and learn new ones. Over the course of the years, I slowly built up a repertoire of songs ranging from pop and light jazz to musicals, Disney tunes and familiar classics.
In 2019, I felt God’s call to leave my fulltime job to do freelance work. It was miraculous that I landed a job as pianist with a private hospital that very year, playing on special occasions to later becoming its resident pianist playing music for patients, their families and visitors.
The repertoire that I had gained with the pianists’ group certainly came in handy as I now could play many varied pieces easily.
This job was, of course, totally different from my previous journalistic work, and at one point, I found myself asking if what I was doing was creating as significant an impact as producing a newspaper which reached out to thousands of readers.
But I decided to surrender this new job to God. I would say a short prayer before each gig: “Holy Spirit, please play through me and let the love of God touch the people through the music.”
Then I saw parents singing and dancing with their children as I played; passersby would smile at me and give me the thumbs-up; I received cards and messages from listeners telling me how they had found the music healing. One young lady, who had to come to the hospital for blood tests regularly after a bone marrow transplant, told me how this demoralised her, “but when I hear you play, I find so much hope in life.”
I feel that God is showing me a new ministry in what I am now doing, it’s a ministry of love, of conveying God’s love to people, of helping them realise how much they are loved. And I know this is not achieved through my own human efforts alone, but is the work of the Holy Spirit.
Just as he had prepared me for work in the Church newspaper through my years in the national daily, so he has prepared me to bring His love to people through music. And He started this work in me as early as when I was just five!
As I have mentioned earlier, it is only on hindsight that I’ve managed to see the patterns that God has been weaving in my life. Disparate incidents and experiences now make sense as I see God’s plans woven like a rich tapestry, complete with their patterns and colours.
