Born in the slums but free to soar high into the skies.

Inspite of my lowly birth circumstances my mind was flying without wings high, high,high in the skies at all times,,,,



Honor Thy Father and Thy Mother
The Ten Commandments say, “Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord your God has commanded you, so that you may live long and that it may go well with you in the land the Lord your God is giving you.” Deuteronomy 5:16
Our God never says, “Honor only model fathers and model mothers.” The verse above means that we must honor all our fathers and mothers in spite of their different lives.
We were born into a poor farming family in Sungei Bidut in the late 1950s. In order to escape the fierce fighting between the communist terrorists and the security forces, we moved to a slum area in Sibu town. My mother planted some vegetables at the road side and washed clothes for the neighborhood bachelor laborers. My father was lame from childhood polio and he went to town everyday early in the morning to look for work. Sometimes he was successful and came back with some “ikan bilis” and groundnuts. But at many other times he came back with only some old paperback English books and some old toys for us. He would say, “I have found work and money and decide to buy these for you.” We kept quiet as we all know that he had not found any work and had gone through the dustbins to bring the items to us. He wanted to maintain his role as the family provider.
One afternoon while I was searching for empty bottles among the rubbish dumps, I saw a dog running frantically down the road with a piece of pork in its jaws. There was a limping man with a stick chasing after it. The mother dog with long sagging breasts had obviously stolen the piece of pork from the butcher and she was bringing it home to its puppies. The man was my father and that night we had pork for dinner for the first time since we moved to the town.
One memorable day, a neighbor came to call me from my secondary school. My father had been run over by a big lorry. I went to pull his body out from underneath the lorry with the help of several firemen. He had a three feet tall old teddy bear in his arms and he was smiling from cheek to cheek even in death. I knew what the last thought was in his mind. It must be, “I am going to make my youngest little girl Jenny happy tonight. She has always wanted a big teddy bear.”
How are we as children going to judge this man? According to the standards of the world, he was a born loser. He lied to his wife and kids almost every day. He was not able to get work and earn money but substituted it with some rubbish from the dustbins. The female dog stole the piece of pork from the butcher. He stole the piece of pork from the female dog. He was worse than dogs and he pretended to be a good family provider.
But we didn’t judge him that way in spite of what other people said about him. He was an unlucky man within the circumstances of his time but he loved us. His little girl Jenny became a famed clinical psychologist in one of the top hospitals through scholarships. She had the blood stained teddy bear in her office at all times. Whenever her patient is a troubled adolescent who cannot accept his parents, she would tell him the story behind the teddy bear. Many a times the patient would break down and cry and went back home to make peace with his parents. My father’s love for his little girl which was manifested in the teddy bear had not been in vain.
What about you my brothers and sisters in Christ? Are you in talking terms with your parents? And are you holding any grudge against them? Do you hate them for what they have done in this world? Are you praying for them every day to come to our ultimate Heavenly Father God Himself?
Please do not judge them by your personal standards and the standards of this world. Not everybody is lucky in this world. Many poor men and women went to the prisons for stealing milk powder from the supermarkets. They didn’t consume the milk powder themselves. It was meant for their little children back home. They had to pay the price of stealing by spending time in the prisons according to the laws of the country. Their children should not condemn them as thieves and convicted felons when they came out to rejoin society. Let God judge them when they meet Him on the Judgment Day.
Do not insult your parents by breaking into their unhappy worlds. Every parent wants to appear capable in front of their spouse and children. Give them every privilege to fulfill their God given natural instinct. Keep your mouth shut even if you know their darkest secrets. Let them live their world and you build your own world out of their ruins. If you know that your parents are doing illegal business to provide for you PhD studies in USA, do not query and condemn them on your graduation day. Pray for God’s power to change them to law-abiding good businessman. If they ask you for help to get themselves out of trouble, do it whole heartedly as a filial child. Do not ask those questions that will incriminate them as crooks in the eyes of God, their beloved families and their standing in the society. God allows us to repent and come back to Him anytime, anywhere under any circumstances without the need of spilling all the beans for the judgment of everyone in the world.
If I had told my poor father “You are a thief who steals a dirty piece of meat from the bitch. You gave that to your children for dinner? You cannot earn money and you ran through the dustbins to give us some rubbish in place of food?”
What do I gain? I may get my anger, hatred and frustrations released for a moment. But I still may not be able to break out from poverty with those few words. What do I lose? I would break the heart, confidence, life and the world of my poor father. I may not be confident enough to get married and be a father myself. I don’t have a lucky life too and I have done many shameful things to earn money for daily survival according to the standards of the world. What happen if one day my sons and daughters stand up and point their fingers at me and exclaimed, “My friend’s mother said that she knew you when you were a teenager. She said she threw a piece of overcooked “you char kueh” into the dustbin next to her roadside stall. You picked it up immediately and ate it. What a shameful scavenger we have discovered about you in your teenage life. We are all ashamed to have a father like you. How are we going to face the society as lawyers, doctors and accountants?” That would break my heart because I did not choose to be a scavenger. Instead I was forced into it by unfavorable life circumstances at that time. In the same way that I have shown respect and honor to my unfortunate father, I can extract the same respect and honor from my children by telling them the story “The father, the dog and the meat for dinner.”
King David is considered a father of the Jews up to this day. When they went to fight and die in battle they carried their national flag which bore the Star of David. But King David was a scheming murderer. He arranged for Uriah to be killed while he successfully schemed to covet his beautiful wife called Bathsheba. But our God still chose him to be the earthly forefather of Jesus Christ and the Jews up to this day revere him as their most illustrious King.
Brothers and Sisters in Christ, give your fathers and mothers the most precious gift that they want from their children, The Gifts of love, respect and honor. It does not matter if they are a scavenger, rummaging through the dustbins everyday for empty cans or the President of USA. Respect them as parents and don’t judge them according to their life accomplishments or mistakes in the secular world. The President of United States Bill Clinton was not an angel too in spite of his high office but his children still love him as a father.
Lastly I hope my story would have touched you and improve the relationship between you and your parents. If I know that one child has approached his estranged father or mother and honored them anew my poor father’s short life on earth would not have been in vain.
God bless you and your beloved parents.