Second-Day Thoughts

Dear Diary,

Second day of 2009, so far so good... I am keeping to the bible plan and have completed Genesis 3 – 5 today. =) However, I want to touch a little on 1 Corinthians 10 which I also read leisurely just now. As I have said in the previous entry on the need to love God and be known by Him, 1 Corinthians 10 reminds us against overconfidence. Haven’t we always come to Christ, get baptised and then start to fade away, doing things our own ways and being so pompous over our unshakeable salvation? Yes, we Christians are privileged to know the true Saviour of this World but we should never take it for granted.

In 1 Cor 10:1 – 2, we see that Saint Paul talks about the Israelites being favoured and saved by God through the Red Sea, the water from the rock and the food which sustained them in the desert. It may be interesting to note that water baptism is illustrated as a parallel to passing through the Red Sea. So the Israelites were “baptised” into Moses by that act. There are people who insisted on baptism by immersion but this verse 2 speaks otherwise. The Israelites were not immersed when they went through the waters... only the Egyptian soldiers were, and obviously we are not to emulate the Egyptians in this scenario. Hence, whether a baptism is done by immersion is not important. Ironically, those who advocated strongly for baptism by immersion, usually believe that water baptism is nothing more than just symbolic and without any merit or sacramental value. So why insist on immersion?

As we look at verse 3 – 5, we see that although God favoured the Israelites and gave them salvation from the slavery of Egypt, He judged them accordingly when they started desiring evil and doing wicked deeds. Basically, Saint Paul was warning the Christians in Corinth of such overconfidence in themselves and their salvation as we can see in verse 6. So what did the Israelites do to incur God’s wrath upon them? Verse 7 seems to be similar to Exodus 32:6, we can see that idolatry leads to immorality. Historically, that was what happened in Corinth... where sexual immorality pervaded the society. To sum it all up, verse 12 tells us that, “Whoever thinks that he stands secure, should take care not to fall.” May God help us to walk in His ways faithfully this year 2009 and beyond.

Anyway, I accompanied Dad to Sim Lim Tower this morning since both of us were on leave. My sister’s Sony Vaio laptop’s adapter was spoilt and she checked the price of that adapter from Sony; it would set her back by $200! So Dad and I went to a shop there to check out if we could get a cheaper one for my sister. We soon found the exact one (in terms of voltage) in a shop! It cost just $45. Since the port connector head was not exactly the same, we were hesitating whether to buy as Dad would have to re-solder again. Quite troublesome! Surprisingly, the elderly store owner was willing to do it for us. I must say that he did an excellent job of changing the connector by cutting our old adapter’s port connection and soldering over to the new one! He even shrink-wrapped the rubber wire casing! Looked so professional! I was observing him as he did that. Just imagine if he does not provide such a service? We probably may not buy. It just dawned on me that the pharmacy profession lost its clout partly because we only sell pre-prepared medications. We are now just a dispensing chemist or a druggist, and no longer the apothecary. Like that man who sold us that adapter in Sim Lim Tower, an apothecary adds value by finding solutions to a problem with his own skills. Other than dispensing, apothecary skills include concocting and formulating medications, minor surgery and even midwifery! So apothecaries were the predecessors of pharmacists and surgeons, okay? Haha... Our profession needs that kind of value-addedness!

That’s all. Goodnight! ;-)

God Bless,

Andrew