| Sunday, May 30, 2004 |
| "DON'T YOU DARE TOUCH MY SHEEP!" |
A tribute of sorts
This afternoon while waiting for my church friends to finish cleaning and packing up (it was our turn to do clean-up after service) Sister Tracy picked up Brother Bernard's bible from a music stand where he'd absent-mindedly forgotten to take it. "Bernard Y.S. Ong!" she said aloud, then walked to me and said, "Here, your ministry leader's."
Now, let me tell you about this Bernard guy. He is my youth ministry leader, and over time we've affectionately shortened "Brother Bernard" to things like Brober (my own), Brother Ber, Bro Bernard (which sounds like Bra Bernard =D), Ber Ber and BB, which sounds like Baby. Baby Ber. Haha. As you can see, I'm extremely fond of him. He has very funny initials - BO; Body Odour. I used to kid him about it.
Bro Ber is a very handsome man. He is tall and skinny, and at only 27, his hair is thinning and receeding.
[His wife once told us a funny story when they brought out one of the kids to a mall. The kid suddenly pointed somewhere shouting, "Uncle Bernard!"
It turned out to be an ad for Yun Nam Hair Care. Everyone roared with laughter upon hearing this story...]
On the other hand, he is very hairy elsewhere, as observed when he wears anything other than trousers/jeans and when he wears shirts with the first button unbuttoned. The youth often quite mercilessly tease him about his hair and joke about transplanting his body hair onto his head. He bears it all with a smile, abeit with some resignation.
I wasn't being sarcastic at all when I said that he is a very handsome man. If you only know him, you'd understand. It's the countenance of God you see. Plus he is a really nice person to start with. Anyhow, if he isn't the best looking man in the world, what does it matter? He's got a beautiful wife who came to Singapore from Australia for him when they were only still dating. She must have known that this was the real deal. =D
Sometimes I look at him and he looks weird, though. Haha. I first noticed him (he wasn't my leader then) was during this Mothers' Day item and he sang with a few other men. I thought, "Ok, tall skinny guy who cannot sing." Today, he leads praise and worship when it is his turn and I've been his back-up singer for a few times already. He still can't sing very well, but he doesn't care, cos' he's worshipping God up there.
BB is a very affectionate person, physically and verbally (though the verbal tends more to be on the written side, ie. online and in SMSes). At first I was a little surprised at how affectionate he was, but I soon realised that it was normal for him and he was like that with everybody. And it's cool that I can hug him. I have to say my church is a little conservative where physical boundaries are concerned and the male leaders usually wouldn't hug the females. I suppose he got this habit from having studied in Australia for a long time. I remember once he prayed for me, and I cried. When he finished the prayer, I turned toward him, tear-stained cheeks and all, and he hugged me. It was very nice. =) Though with him we only feel his shirt (being so very skinny) but yeah. Hugging is good. Everyone should hug each other (with no sexual connotation of course, unless you're together).
The other thing that's really cool about BB is that he treats us like his peers, like young adults. He talks nonsense with us, but when it's time for business, it's business. He took over the ministry after our previous leader left this church (for various reasons unverified) and it must have been really stressful, but somehow he did it. Once he took me out to check out info on foreign universities, and I felt that he was very much like a daddy that day.
I'm talking about him like he's perfect, isn't it? Of course not. He can be rather absent-minded and careless at times, but it's hard to be mad for long when things happen. After all, he is our shepherd. =)
So that was my not-so-short intro on BB, and now the story proper. If you remember before I went into this, I was holding on to his bible. He wasn't around, so I flipped through it, reading the various notes he'd pasted in it. The very first one I saw read:
"David would protect his sheep by going after the lion who threatened them and killing them.
As a leader, do I go after the enemy in the same way to protect my sheep?
'DON'T YOU DARE TOUCH MY SHEEP!'"
I was really touched by the last line. Probably a reminder to himself to protect us as our shepherd. It suddenly hit me just how much, how strongly and how fiercely Brother Bernard loves us. That he would want to protect us against the enemy, not passively, but actively, and to be willing to sacrifice for us.
Funny. Imagine this skinny man trying to defend an assorted group of young people, some of whom are bigger and more muscular than him. And with so many of us to attend to. It's unspoken but all of us love him and respect him very much. Even a certain vulgarity-spewing friend of one of the guys know that BB is "a good man".
Now, that's leadership. =)
"David said to Saul, 'Your servant has been keeping his father's sheep. When a lion or a bear came and carried off a sheep from the flock, I went after it, struck it and rescued the sheep from its mouth. When it turned on me, I seized it by its hair, struck it and killed it.'" - 1 Samuel 17: 34-35 |
posted by esther @ 11:20 PM  |
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