Bishop’s Message
Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.
~ Colossians 3:12 (NIV)
A good and godly Singaporean once told me that he was born on World Toilet Day. I knew he was a November baby, but I didn’t know that 19 November had been designated by the United Nations as World Toilet Day! Nor did I know that this Toilet Day gave the Singapore Government (through the efforts of Jack Sim) its very first successful Resolution adopted by the UN in 2013!1
The aim is to make us aware that many families in our world lack access to a good toilet and basic sanitation, essentials to good hygiene and health. The UN website on World Toilet Day offers us opportunities to steward some personal resources to helping a few families receive access to a toilet. Such stewardship would be a much-appreciated act of kindness, and also a small but significant way of celebrating World Kindness Day which is observed annually just six days earlier on 13 November.
The Bible urges all human beings towards acts of kindness. It so happens that in Greek (the language in which much of the Bible was originally written) the words for “kindness” (chrestos) and “Christ” (Christos) look and sound very similar. So as Christians, let us respond to the chrestos and Christos of God by “clothing ourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience”.
Bishop Dr Gordon Wong was elected Bishop of The Methodist Church in Singapore in 2020.
He served as President of the Trinity Annual Conference from 2012-2020.