At our youth group’s 50th reunion, I met Robert and Lea. You might be familiar with their songs that we frequently sing such as Deeper in Love and Kau Yang Terindah. It’s nice seeing them again and to hear what God is doing in their lives and ministries. But what did touch me was what Robert shared in that meeting, that it was in our youth group that he was first exposed to church life that eventually led him to follow Christ. I remember vividly it was Kokoy who first invited him to join our singing group, so, indirectly, brought him to the fold of Our Good Shepherd. We’ll never know how God works!
It was also in that reunion that Robert shared that several years ago he was diagnosed with lymphoma and had to endure treatment. He is now in full remission and thankful to God for giving him another opportunity to live for Christ Our Lord and to serve Him. Praise God for His mercy! But there is something else that I’d like to share with you and that’s about Lea, Robert’s wife. When we met, I told her that I always remember her older sister, Swat Hiang, who happened to be Santy’s close childhood friend. Swat Hiang died at a young age and her death plunged her parents to a deep and dark pit.
But God used her death to bring revival not only to her parents, but also to Indonesia. I told Lea that I believe her mom, whom I used to call Tante Swe Lie, was the catalyst, or at least one of the catalysts, of the revival that spread like fire across Indonesia in the late 1970s. With her band, The Disciples, she travelled all over with celebrities like Rudy Hartono, the badminton icon, to share the Gospel. By the grace of God, that fire is still burning. God’s marvelous work!
Sickness and death are never in our plan, but they are in God’s plan. And in the plan of God, they are used to bring about something that is greater than anything we can imagine. God’s mysterious work!
Pastor Paul