Book Reviews

ACCIDENT? When life takes an unexpected turn A SON’S ACCOUNT BY Ling Kin Yew ACCIDENT? LING KIN YEW

Accident? When Life Takes an Unexpected Turn—A Son’s Account By Ling Kin Yew

Published by Landmark Books (2019), 68 pages ORDER AT

https://tinyurl.com/sxkxg77 or SCAN the QR code.

A free-will offering will be collected at point of delivery. All profits will be channelled to charity.

ACCIDENT? When life takes an unexpected turn

Is anything ever an accident? The Rev Ling Kin Yew, pastor at Fairfield Methodist Church, ponders this question in his book Accident? When Life Takes an Unexpected Turn.

One early morning in May 2005, the Rev Ling received a harrowing phone call from his sister, Dawn, who was in Mobile, Alabama in the US. Their parents had been visiting her when the car they were in was involved in a horrific accident with a train.

While Mrs Ling tore a knee ligament and Dawn escaped unscathed, the accident left Mr Ling Swee Chan, then 58, with a severed spine, collapsed lungs and a jaw broken into three parts. He was paralysed from the chest down and spent more than half a year in hospital.

Earlier in his life, the Rev Ling had had many questions and doubts, like “Why can’t life be free from pain and suffering? What is the purpose of suffering? What is life all about anyway?”

Even though life had taken a difficult turn because of the accident, the Rev Ling came to realise that “some questions may never be answered. Some things about God, God’s creation and plans, we’ll never understand. Many times, the more we know, the more we realise we don’t know.”

But because of the accident, his parents had opportunities to share their testimony whenever they could, such as at churches and community gatherings. The Rev Ling, as the Assistant House Master at Oldham Hall and later through the Methodist Missions Society, shared about the accident and its aftermath to encourage others.

The Rev Ling is able to, in this slim volume, bring the reader through his roller coaster of emotions during and after his father’s accident, and then to the realisation that “what had initially seemed like a terrible accident paved the way to much unexpected blessing”. The questions at the end of the book are helpful for readers to reflect on God’s purpose in their lives.

IRREVOCABLE GIFTS How do our gifts help make sense of who we are?

Irrevocable Gifts By Dawn Fung, Bernice Lee, Emily Lim-Leh, Madeline Ang, Favian Ee and Calvin Chong

Published by The Group (2019), 96 pages

ORDER AT

https://graceworks.com.sg

$14.90 (no GST, free shipping within Singapore)

Enjoy 10% off the price of Irrevocable Gifts by using the promo code irrevocable10 at the webstore’s checkout page (valid from 1–31 Mar 2020). What does a Christian Creative do with their gift?

This is the question that Irrevocable Gifts, a collection of essays by six Christian creative practitioners, addresses.

“Creating is making meaning of life,” Dawn Fung writes in the Introduction. “For Christians, the process and fruit are meditative, so much that we often blur the lines between divinity and expression.” Often, they are torn between staying true to biblical principles while expressing themselves freely.

The book title is based on Romans 11:29: that whatever the gifts God has given you, they are irrevocable. The six creatives—Dawn, a songwriter; Bernice Lee, an editor; Emily Lim-Leh, a children’s book author; Madeline Ang, a poet; Favian Ee, an artist; and Calvin Chong, a musician—lay bare their struggles to reconcile their gifts with their calling in life.

Creativity is sometimes not just an art, but a science, as told by Calvin, who is a keen collector of ethnic flutes from the world over. Being able to play requires not just passion, but technical know-how. “Good art,” he relates, “like good ministry, requires much preparation, patience, and persistence.”

Especially touching is the chapter by Emily, an award-winning children’s book writer who lost her voice to a rare disorder and was later diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer in 2016. But in losing her ability to articulate vocally, she discovered a gift for storytelling that helped her and her family through the difficult period of cancer recovery.

While the book arrives at no simple answers, it closes with reflection questions crafted by each the authors for readers to come up with their own. Whether the reader’s spiritual gift is of the creative variety or otherwise, the writers hope that their sharing will stimulate deep conversations in readers’ lives and ministry.