Principal's Foreword

No Part Too Small & No One, Insignificant

If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it –1 Corinthians 12:26 (NIV)

Have you ever stubbed your pinky toe? I stubbed mine against a doorframe just last year. The jolt of pain was excruciating. I could not walk properly for weeks and had to rely on comfortable footwear to accommodate my injured toe.

The incident made me appreciate much more how five toes are needed on each foot to stand, walk or run. While the big toe is the most important because it bears about forty percent of our body weight, the other toes play their part by maintaining proper balance to support our total body weight.

Although the pinky toe may seem the least amongst toes, it contains many nerves. We will be wincing in pain should we stub it against something hard. The pain often lingers for days on end.

Now for the feet. Some say that the foot is the most stressed part of the body and often, the most neglected. Feet have a bad reputation. They are thought of as dirty, ugly, smelly and we may try to hide them away. We may soap our hands dailyꟷ before and after meals, after a toilet break, or after a cough or sneeze, when we cover our mouth or nose – but for our sweaty feet, smelly from the festering bacteria they harbour, we wash them only when we shower. Should we not be taking better care of our feet given how much we use them?

Renowned hand surgeon Dr Paul Brand and Philip Yancey explore the human body in Fearfully and Wonderfully Made, a book that describes the body as a community of individual cells as basic units. Readers draw deep insights and parallels from the relationships between the variety of purposive cells in the human body and diversity of God’s people in the Body of Christ. We learn, e.g., how bone cells live in rigid structures to produce strength, how different skin cells pattern themselves as soft or textured, for one, to form unique fingerprints, and how amazing spider-like nerve cells – reputedly the king of cells – make up the highways of the central nervous system to signal and communicate to the brain and five senses.

Red blood cells, discs resembling Lifesaver candies, voyage through my blood loaded with oxygen to feed the other cells. Muscle cells, which absorb so much of that nourishment, are sleek and supple, full of coiled energy. Cartilage cells with shiny black nuclei look like bunches of black-eyed peas glued tightly together for strength. Fat cells seem lazy and leaden, like bulging white plastic garbage bags jammed together.

Truly, we are fearfully and wonderfully made – Psalm 139:14b(NIV)

Oftentimes, it is only when one part hurts or is missing that we start to feel the pain, to acknowledge how important it is and how much it belongs to the whole body and connected it is to one another. Like my small toe.

1 Corinthians 12 inspires me to think of ACS this way:

Just as ACS, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ… Now if the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact God has placed the parts in ACS, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would ACS be? As it is, there are many parts, but one ACS.

We must never forget that ACS is a member of the larger Body of Christ, of which Christ is our Head. We do not exist for ourselves, but to serve Christ and others.

This year, we want to live out our theme verse: If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it (1 Corinthians 12:26). My prayer for the ACS (Primary) community ꟷ boys, staff, parents and partners ꟷ is that we will recognise our different strengths and celebrate our diversity. We will show love, kindness and respect to one another. When one part suffers, just like my pinky toe, the rest of the body will care deeply for it. When one part is honoured, we will have an abundance mindset and rejoice with it. May we fix our eyes on our Lord Jesus Christ, who wept for humanity even though He was God, as we look to Him to fill us with same love to care for another.

To God Be The Glory. The Best Is Yet To Be!

Mrs Leong-Ho Hil May

Principal

ACS (Primary)