How's Our Eye?

How's Our Eye?

​This afternoon I was reminded by a FB post exactly a decade ago, when I was stopped in my tracks due to an A & E scare. I went to A & E due to an accident in the kitchen that almost cost me my eye!
I was heating up pork broth with spinach and the silicon ladle backsplashed boiling soup with oil and pepper with much force into my right eye. I felt the heat and pain especially in the corner of my right eye and immediately ran running tap water into my eye for the next 5 to 10 min with slight blurring of vision thereafter.

Half an hour later, Jason drove me to the A & E and about 45 min later, the doctor tested my eye and got my eye checked.

Apart from slight itch and slight pain, thankfully all is fine and well. Even through this incident, I am thankful for the Lord's continued protection and quick recovery.
It was really uncanny that 3 days ago I had gone for an eye check and my eyes were all good and healthy. And then this happened.

I am reminded of the words of Jesus:
Matt 6:21 “Your eye is like a lamp that provides light for your body. When your eye is healthy, your whole body is filled with light."

I suppose this links back to the fb reminder posted 10 years ago, of the opportunity to preach and conduct a discipleship training amongst Bangladeshi and Indian migrant workers living in dormitories in Singapore. I am thankful to God for that precious opportunity to sow His love and grace amongst these communities.

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Many of these foreign workers have left their home country and families to make a better living for themselves and their families back home. Most of them came to Singapore to become construction workers. As a Singaporean growing up in a concrete jungle, these marginalised workers are commonly overlooked, hidden away in dormitories and have living conditions neglected and most are sometimes shunned in public. 

It is interesting that in the recent covid-19 epidemic in Singapore, these foreign workers have come into the spotlight due to the spread of the virus in their dormitories.
Out of Singapore’s 58,000 cases of COVID-19, about 95% are low-waged migrants from Bangladesh and India. Over the past 40 odd years I have lived in Singapore before moving to Australia, I have come to appreciate that these migrant men have become the ones who built and maintain most of the Singapore's infrastructures including the subways. 

In the past months during the lockdown in Singapore, I am blessed and proud to hear of various Christian believers and pastors in Singapore, who have taken time and effort, and given of their finances and resources to reach out to many of these workers, distributing face masks, hand sanitizers, even food baskets and through various other forms of outreach. 

Today's accident is not just an accident but a reminder I will find hard to forget.

Do we SEE others as Jesus sees, with eyes of compassion, love and grace or through judgemental and critical eyes especially on the marginalised in society?

Jesus said: If our eyes are good and healthy, our whole body will be full of light. If our eyes are bad or unhealthy, the whole body is full of darkness and how great is that darkness! 

Our eyes are important instruments of light into our body. And as the Body of Christ, may we always see with His eyes and together shine forth the light of Christ regardless of where we are.