On Saturday, we sent Nadia's mother to the JFK airport. Coincidentally, I met Jessy, the former choir master and pianist for my previous church, and his family who are travelling to Taiwan. It was certainly a long time no see. He's one of the few if not the only one, I knew back then in the chuch, to be filled with zeal.
At church, rehearsed the hymn, "And Can It Be?", to my shock, as I glanced the name of the composer of this SAGINA hymn tune, I thought he was the Restoration Movement-of the Second Great Awakening founder, Thomas Campbell (1763-1854), who was the key source of the superficial Churches of Christ denomination. A different Campbell (1800-1876), he certainly had me marveled, for the SAGINA tune is popular.
And then there is this "The Heavens Resound" Arranged from Beethoven. No one heard of this piece from Beethoven's collections. One commented if it was one of Ludvig's other family member. I checked. It is by Ludvig, from Op. 48 (6 songs) No. 4: Die Ehre Gottes aus de Natur (The Glory of God in Nature)
At worship, the sermon was by Minister David Tong.
He spoke of a quote by Oscar Wilde (a Catholic): The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.
Since it is a Catholic's view point, it is easily misunderstood. Because for a Catholic, it would apply non-reformation doctrine Predestination of the uncertainty of a believer's own salvation. I said misunderstood because we could put the meaning of the phrase into the right context: That thought the saints here refers to those who are already in Heaven, the sinner referred to in the quote, who has a FUTURE, is the sinner that is obviously elected. Of course, the Arminians and the Catholics would abhor this meaning. But I am not saying, as Rev. Lin later in the service prayed, "the Christians have the future", as if for correction (speaking of which, I would stress that though common practice in the didactics of this church, it is wrong to ONLY correct someone's saying without actually confronting the person in question at any time), because like the Catholics, I cannot be certain of those who are chosen but my own salvation and hope on certain others, and unlike Rev. Lin and the likes of her kind: many traditional Christians of the West today (those who act as if they could judge one's election by their own feelings and how well one treats them) viz. the non-evangelicals. There is of course, another problem, that when one opt to say "Christians" instead of "Sinners", one's repentance may be questionable, but that is for another tale.
At night, Nadia quizzed me on the birthday present she gave me last year. I took a while (5-10 mins) to remember it: The AMNH joint membership. I just hope I am fully prepared for the questionaire of the Marriage Greencard interview in the future that is still long way ahead.